AUSTIN, Texas — The Democratic National Committee on Saturday voted to approve dueling resolutions affecting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
One resolution would call to abolish ICE, and one would call to reform it. Both were passed out of committee on Thursday, and the resolutions, which were part of a larger package of resolutions, were sent to the full membership and passed unanimously by voice vote.
For Democrats, the battle over whether “abolish” ICE or “reform” ICE language highlights the intraparty friction between establishment Democrats and far-left insurgents who have energized many party activists in the base that have become a powerful force in the midterm campaigns.
North Carolina DNC member John Verdejo said socialist candidates were beating establishment candidates because some longtime incumbents lost touch with the base.
“Do a better job. Because if you were doing the job that we would like you to do, there’d be no insurgents coming after you,” he told The Washington Times. “All due respect, some of them got fat, while the rest of us were starving.”
The resolution to abolish ICE passed out of committee 25-12 and included a heated debate among the members.
DNC member Marge Hoffa, vice chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, argued unsuccessfully, “We shouldn’t contradict ourselves by also introducing a resolution that would now call to abolish something that we have a well-established track record of calling to be drastically reformed.”
Despite the additional passage of the “reform” ICE resolution, the Republican National Committee went after the DNC for also adopting the “abolish” ICE resolution, calling it a resolution to “abolish law enforcement.”
“Democrats made it official: they care more about protecting violent illegal aliens than American families,” said Chairman Joe Gruters.
“While President Trump and Republicans are securing our border and standing with law enforcement, Democrats want to let dangerous illegal criminals run wild in our communities. This resolution is political suicide, and Democrats will pay for choosing open borders over public safety, border security, and backing the blue.”
Former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison pushed back hard when asked about whether the DNC has lurched leftward on policy — insisting the party organization is merely an “infrastructure” body focused on winning elections, not setting policy.
“The DNC is not a policy organization. It is a party infrastructure. It focuses on making sure that you have the infrastructure to win elections,” Mr. Harrison told The Washington Times.
“We don’t set policy. We are not a legislative committee. We are not the House. We are not the Senate. We’re not governors.”
But Mr. Harrison himself acknowledged that the DNC does produce a platform, which candidates run under a party banner, and voters are watching closely on flashpoint issues, including immigration enforcement, transgender policy and the Middle East.
“The platform is a platform that the DNC comes up with,” he said.
“The presidential candidate — that platform is what came up because it was a Joe Biden platform in which those are the core beliefs of what a Biden administration would have looked like because it was the Biden delegates who helped to craft that platform before the big switch.”
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