Since January, ICE has taken nearly 150,000 people into custody, with about 100,000 having pending charges or prior convictions. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 83% of likely voters consider deporting criminal illegal immigrants important. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has criticized ICE operations, comparing them to an unaccountable police force.
Maddow’s program showed footage of ICE arrests while she criticized the agency’s aggressive enforcement methods. She stated that “the thing we were all warning about for the last few years … is here.”
Maddow said, “We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country. And it sounds melodramatic to say it, I know, but just go with that for a minute, right?” She added, “Think in melodramatic terms. Think in cinematic terms. Imagine the cartoon-level caricature of what you think a dictatorship looks like.”
Maddow concluded by noting that ICE has been “breaking people’s car windows and snatching people off the streets and at church parking lots and courtroom hallways and taking them away with no charges.”
Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza rejected claims of dictatorship and has supported tougher enforcement. D’Souza wrote, “If this is dictatorship, let’s have more of it. Of course it’s not.”
Critics have questioned ICE tactics and respect of civil liberties. Maddow said, “I mean, it’s secret police, right? A massive, anonymous, unbadged, literally masked, totally unaccountable internal police force that apparently has infinite funding but no identifiable leadership.”
D’Souza added, “Rather, the Left is furious, and alarmed, that its thugs are no longer in charge.”
Bradenton Herald: ICE Sparks Outrage: MSNBC’s Maddow Responds to Arrests
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