Abolish ICE: Ocasio-Cortez Calls on Protesters to “Occupy Airports”

Apparently not sufficiently embarrassed by the revelation of her shallow Israel knowledge on PBS last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now joining the furthest of the far left as she calls on protesters to occupy border crossings, airports, and ICE offices around the country in furtherance of her “Abolish ICE” agenda.

The move is likely not to win her any new friends in the Democratic Party, where lawmakers are running as fast as they can away from THEIR OWN Abolish Ice bill after Republicans threatened to call their bluff and hold a vote. The Democrats in Washington are finally beginning to realize they pushed the illegal immigration vote just a tad too far into open-borders territory and they’re quietly trying to walk it back to sane ground (for them, anyway).

Ocasio-Cortez didn’t get the message.

In an interview with Democracy Now on Monday, the self-proclaimed socialist contender said she was proud of her decision to leave the campaign trail for a journey to the U.S.-Mexico border in the last days of the contest.

“There is no convenient time to stand up against human rights violations,” she said. “I may have had a primary three days after I went down there, but we’re not going to win if we don’t stand for anything. We have to show people that we’re willing to walk the walk and put our money where our mouth is.

“Our nation is in a moral crisis,” she continued. “Every day that we allow the continued violation of those children’s rights is the day that I believe the moral character of the United States is at stake.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that Americans who want to see Immigration and Customs Enforcement abolished have to do everything possible to put the issue in the headlines.

“We have to occupy all of it,” she said. “We need to occupy every airport. We need to occupy every border. We need to occupy every ICE office until those kids are back with their parents, period.”

At that point, Ocasio-Cortez proved she knows as little about ICE as she does about the Israel-Palestine situation.

“First of all, ICE is not Border Patrol,” she said. “When we talk about abolishing ICE, we’re talking about ending family detention. We’re talking about ending an agency and ending a practice and a structure that is not accountable to the U.S. Department of Justice, that often takes on things that look a lot like enforcement activities. So to have an enforcement agency that operates outside of the accountability of the Department of Justice, it’s no surprise to see the violations of civil and human rights that we’re seeing right now.”

Except, of course, the family detention situation was overseen by the Border Patrol…not ICE. Furthermore, everything she said about ICE in terms of accountability is also true of Border Patrol. Both are agencies under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. They are “sister agencies,” both of them tasked with separate but equally important aspects of enforcing U.S. immigration law. Finally, yes ICE takes on “enforcement activities.” Why the hell wouldn’t they…?

But it’s useless to argue with cluelessness, ignorance, and propaganda, which Ocasio-Cortez both ingests and spews. Republicans on the Hill have the right idea; let the Democrats hang themselves with their own extremism. The American people aren’t going to go for it.