Senator Gary Winfield Wants to Abolish ICE

As more and more immigrants begin to come to New Haven, CT, many government officials are urging for ICE to be disestablished. ICE, otherwise known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, deports, detains, and arrests illegal immigrants in the United States. ICE determines if the immigrant needs to be removed from the country. The goal of ICE is to remove immigrants who have failed to receive asylum, or have done crimes, and to keep America safe by not letting in terrorists. Many want to get rid of this law, because they believe ICE only highlights the negative side of immigration.

One of these is Connecticut democratic state senator Gary Winfield. In a recent panel discussion, Winfield said, “ICE is different than other organizations. It was made to do some of the negative things that we’ve seen the news talk about in the last couple of months… ICE should be completely eliminated.” He is saying that he does not support ICE because they do not allow any illegal immigrants to stay in America. Winfield said that sometimes, the immigrant was a refugee, so they had to leave. He believes that ICE should help these immigrants and help them towards citizenship, not deport them.

Assistant Chief Counsel for ICE, Courtney Gates-Graceson thinks otherwise. She believes that abolishing ICE is very dangerous. Gates-Graceson said it would “Cause trouble because ICE is already so built up… It would be very hard to build a whole new organization.” She also believes that ICE helps the country. On a daily basis, ICE apprehends about 10 terrorists at borders. Plus, she believes the guards on the borders are not very trained, and with ICE there, the borders have more patrol. “After all,” she said, “ICE was created to protect our country, not divide it.” Winfield also exclaimed how it is never right to refuse refugees seeking asylum. He believes that even though the immigrants may be illegal, they should still be allowed into the country. Some of the immigrants came in as a baby, otherwise known as “dreamers”, so they did not have a choice, and others came because there country was not safe and they were not welcomed to it anymore. Gates-Graceson believes that there is currently not enough space for the immigrants, so the more that they can deport, the more space there will be. She also said that you “Can't have too many immigrants.” She believes that it is not ICE’s fault they have to deport immigrants. Atternies do what the government and president do. Also, Gates-Graceson wants immigrants to come, she just want them to “Do it legally,” because if they don't apply for admission they will be deported.

Some ideas that the government, including Senator Winfield have, is that they want to start by cutting funding for deportations. If they were to cut the funds, then ICE would be unable to deport immigrants, they would just be able to “give them warnings”. This would urge the immigrants to attempt to receive a green card, or maybe even citizenship.

Gary Winfield wants to abolish ICE, while Courtney Gates-Graceson supports it. What do you think?