Rep. Ilhan Omar took to social media Thursday to declare it “un-American” for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain “immigrants” and to call for the agency to be defunded.
“ICE is requesting 500 beds from Sherburne County to detain immigrants,” she tweeted in response to the county jail’s request for expansion of its 300 beds for ICE. More than half of the detainees in the facility from January to October 2018 were from Mexico. Three-fourths had previous criminal convictions.
“It’s un-American to criminalize immigrants for wanting to come to this country for a better life. This is why ICE needs to be defunded,” she added, making no distinction between legal and illegal immigrants in her tweet.