Mark Joseph Stern: Why did you decide to call for the abolition of ICE?
Randy Bryce: I’ve met a lot of good people who live in terror on a daily basis. They didn’t want to uproot from their native country, but they felt they had no choice, no other way to provide a better future for their kids. I can understand that. I would do anything for my son. And I certainly wouldn’t stay somewhere if I felt he couldn’t thrive there, or I couldn’t provide a safe home for him.
These immigrant families I’ve met and worked alongside—they work incredibly hard, they give back to their community, they create jobs and run small businesses. They embody the American dream. If our country provided them with any sort of real pathway to legal residency, I know they would jump through any number of hoops to do so. But we don’t—Paul Ryan and the president have failed to do that. Instead, they have given more and more funding and power to an agency that has abused it—deporting an increasing number of women, children, and asylum seekers with no criminal record back to countries where their lives are at risk, tearing apart their families.
When agencies abuse their power that way, when they stray so far from their mission, and act in such contradiction with our shared American values, it’s fair to question whether that agency should exist at all. I am confident that other parts of the federal government could effectively carry out the functions of immigration and customs enforcement that are necessary, as they did 15 years ago before ICE was created.