Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Smacks Down Fox News Commentator Who Cited Nazis to Shame Her About Abolishing ICE
On Tuesday, Katie Pavlich, a conservative commentator and the host of Fox News' "Outnumbered," went after Democratic socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, trying to shame her for wanting to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — a position that is gaining traction with several Democrats following horror stories of abuse at the hands of the agency.
Specifically, Pavlich noted that ICE just removed a 95-year-old Nazi prison guard who had sneaked into the U.S. by posing as a war refugee, and lived for years, undetected, in the New York City district for which Ocasio-Cortez is now running:
. @Ocasio2018 wants to abolish ICE. Today ICE deported an actual Nazi from her congressional district in Queens. https://t.co/HwgFX9hntQ— Katie Pavlich (@Katie Pavlich) 1534857011
But Ocasio-Cortez did not flinch. Instead, she replied by dismantling the straw man argument, and exposing the hypocrisy of any Trump-supporting pundit lecturing others on Nazism:
#AbolishICE means not having an agency that incarcerates children and sexually assaults women with impunity. It do… https://t.co/L3SnjV5jQu— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) 1534865515
Ocasio-Cortez drew an important distinction. Believing that ICE is a fundamentally flawed, constitutionally questionable agency that should be abolished is not the same as believing we should have no immigration laws and no deportations.
In fact, ICE itself has only existed as an agency since 2003, when it was created in as part of the massive post-9/11 boosting of the security state. Prior to that, we still had deportations, of course, but through a relatively less authoritarian agency, which was known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and immigration enforcement was not considered a national security function in the same way it is today.
Furthermore, it seems misplaced to imply that Ocasio-Cortez somehow does not care about eliminating white supremacy when the President of the United States can't even bring himself to condemn neo-Nazi marches.
Yesterday, Pavlich also went after Ocasio-Cortez, accusing her of harboring unauthorized immigrants at a town hall because it was closed to the press. In fact, she made the town hall private so that she could speak to victims of domestic abuse in a safe, uninterrupted environment.
