Senate Candidate Critiques ICE’s Actions

During a debate in Grand Rapids, Abdulrahman El-Sayed, a Muslim leftist candidate for the U.S. Senate from Michigan, asserted that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is causing fear in communities, stating that they are “terrorizing our streets.”

The debate moderator, Rick Albin, a seasoned political reporter from WOOD TV8, posed a question to El-Sayed regarding his position on immigration enforcement. He asked, “You’ve made your position clear. You want to abolish ICE. Let me give you a scenario. If an undocumented immigrant in Michigan commits a violent crime, serves a sentence, and has a deportation order, under your system, would he be deported?”

El-Sayed responded affirmatively, saying, “Yes. But you don’t have to do that by violating the whole Constitution in the way that ICE has been enabled to do by this rogue administration. ICE right now is not about immigration enforcement. ICE is about terrorizing our streets.”

He pointed to incidents involving ICE in Minneapolis that resulted in the deaths of two individuals, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. “They killed two people,” he said. “I think we can go back to an era like INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] when we enforced immigration policy respectfully within the bounds of the Constitution. But I also think we need a pathway to citizenship for folks who are stuck in limbo right now.”

El-Sayed further criticized the current administration for failing to properly fund efforts to secure the southern border, mentioning a federal report from September that indicated no releases had occurred at the southern border for 16 months. This marked a historical low in border crossings, with a 94 percent drop in daily apprehensions since the Biden administration took office. He contrasted this with the previous administration’s funding for a “smart border wall,” which allocated $46.5 billion.

“You’ve got this tough guy attitude to immigration that’s not keeping us safe,” El-Sayed claimed. “In fact, it’s terrorizing folks in our streets. It’s not funding the southern border, which needs to be kept safe. But what it is doing — it’s weaponizing an agency of the government at the tune of Donald Trump and his goons.”