Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum argued Sunday that the Trump administration is “literally terrorizing people” by going through with planned ICE raids on illegal immigrants under deportation orders.
During a panel segment of “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, Gillum called the raids a “strategy” designed to “demonize black and brown people” in order to secure a second term in the White House.
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Tapper began the segment by pointing out the extreme positions taken by a number of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, noting that former HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — among others — had called for the decriminalization of border-crossings.
“It does seem the more that President Trump runs to the right, more Democratic candidates run to the left,” Tapper continued.
“He’s not running to the right. This is literally terrorizing people,” Gillum responded. “I said an extra prayer for the mother and the child and family who are right now crunched in a bathroom or terrified of going to the door or they couldn’t go to church this morning because they are terrified of what will happen if they exited the door.”
“You have kids who are terrified they may come home and parents won’t be there,” Gillum continued, speaking to the continued fear that these raids might separate families. (RELATED: NYPD Union To Members: Do Not ‘Leave Any ICE Agent Abandoned’ During Raids This Weekend)
Gillum went on to accuse President Donald Trump of using the raids as an electoral strategy to rally his base and “demonize black and brown people and people who speak a different language or a different country of origin. We’re talking about millions of people here and there is in my opinion only one effect here and that is to terrify his base against folks who look like the folks that they showed in cages the other day.”
He concluded by claiming that the photos showing Vice President Mike Pence — who visited the border earlier in the week with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — showed Pence’s “inhumanity.”
“There is a reason why the vice president went where he went and there is a reason why they showed the inhumanity of the vice president and the suits looking on as these men in cages with no humanity,” Gillum concluded. “My biggest fear, quite frankly, is the effect this will have, the traumatizing effect this will have for people of color all across the country, all for a political stunt.”
Editor’s Note: This article wrongly identified Andrew Gillum as Bakari Sellers in its initial publication. That has been corrected.