WATCH: Rachel Morin’s Senator Chris Van Hollen Calls for ICE to be Defunded – Says Illegals Pose “No Public Threat Whatsoever” and “ICE Agents Are the Ones Breaking the Law, Not the Peaceful Protesters”
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on Sunday called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be defunded and claimed that the violent rioters impeding ICE operations and assaulting law enforcement are “peaceful protesters” acting lawfully.
Van Hollen represents Maryland, where Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother, was horrifically raped and murdered in 2023 by a Salvadoran illegal alien. It’s people like her murderer that he wants to keep in the country. As The Gateway Pundit reported, Rachel’s mother, Patty Morin, lashed out at Van Hollen while speaking at a White House press briefing last April, telling reporters, “To have a senator from Maryland, who didn’t even acknowledge or barely acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother and now a grand baby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen.”
The Maryland Senator told ABC’s This Week guest host Jonathan Karl that he will not vote for “one dime to support this lawless, brutal Trump ICE operation,” while claiming that the rioters are being prevented from “engaging in protected peaceful protest.” He continued, “My view is there has to be dramatic change. I don’t foresee this administration doing that at this moment. So, I’m saying I won’t provide any funding.”
This is the same Democratic Party playbook from 2020: Defund the police and refer to violent rioters and insurrectionists as “peaceful protesters” as they destroy American cities.
Van Hollen further agreed that the Democrats’ messaging to abolish ICE could be problematic. Still, he claimed that “what’s happening right now is the ICE agents are the ones breaking the law, not the peaceful protesters.”
“I believe we should not be funding an ICE operation that is completely lawless. It needs dramatic reform,” he added, while claiming that the illegal aliens being apprehended “posed no public threat whatsoever.”
WATCH:
Transcript below:
Karl: You have said that you won’t vote for a single dollar to fund Trump’s ICE operations until there are reforms. So, what are you demanding? And is that leverage that can actually work?
Van Hollen: Well, what — it — what I’m saying is exactly as you quoted, that I am not going to cast a vote, not one dime, to support this lawless, brutal Trump ICE operation. So, what I’m saying is unless there are significant reforms to rein in this lawless ICE operation and there was a federal judge that just this week said that ICE agents were violating people’s constitutional rights, right? They were preventing them from engaging in protected peaceful protest.
So, my view is there has to be dramatic change. I don’t foresee this administration doing that at this moment. So, I’m saying I won’t provide any funding.
Karl: I don’t hear you saying what I’m hearing from a lot of others in the party, and the protesters certainly, to abolish ICE, but we are hearing those calls.And I want to read you what your colleague Ruben Gallego said about this. He said, “Clearly, ICE is an absolute problem. They’re out of control, moving way too fast. The last thing we need to do again is to make the same mistake when it comes to defund the police rhetoric.”
Are you worried that these calls to abolish ICE could be problematic for — for the party? I mean, people might not like what they’re seeing ICE doing, but they think our immigration law should be enforced.
Van Hollen: Well — well, yes, but what’s happening right now is the ICE agents are the ones breaking the law, not the peaceful protesters. So, I believe we should not be funding an ICE operation that is completely lawless. It needs dramatic reform. You know, Donald Trump said he was going to go after the, quote, “worst of the worst”.
If you look at their own data, 80 percent of the people they’re apprehending around the country posed no public threat whatsoever. Instead of addressing that problem, they pulled down the data so we can no longer see it. And what happens if — he seemed to back off the Insurrection Act, although even as he did it, he said, “I’ll do it if I need to.” And we know that troops have been put on standby, active duty troops have been put on standby.
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier, Democratic Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “I think ICE needs to be totally torn down,” and likened the agency to a “third-world police force” and President Trump’s personal “goon squad.”
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