An immigration advocate who has the hashtag “AbolishBorders” in her bio on X, which was formerly known as Twitter, met with a top Biden Administration Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Tuesday, she said on social media.
Setareh Ghandehari, who serves as an advocacy director of the anti-immigration detention group Detention Watch Network, said she met with the ICE chief of staff, who is Michael D. Lumpkin, to share the organization’s demands. ICE had more than 6 million illegal migrants that have been released into the country and are being monitored by the agency in fiscal year 2023, according to an agency report.
“Yesterday I met with ICE’s new Chief of Staff to make clear our demands for a world without ICE detention & a future where all people are able to live freely w/ the support of their community and loved ones, not behind bars as they navigate their immigration cases,” Ghandehari said.
Activist Adam de Monet wears an “Abolish ICE” facemask while joining others during a “Reunite Our Families Now” rally in Los Angeles, California on March 6, 2021, to protest continued deportations under US President Joe Biden, urging that ICE be abolished and calling for the closure of camps where immigrants are being held. (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
The Biden Administration has limited immigration enforcement to those deemed to be threats to public safety and national security. Additionally, the Biden Administration has let thousands of detention beds go empty while taxpayers still foot the bill for them.
“The Biden administration can still take steps towards making that world a reality by shutting down detention centers, like Torrance, Winn & Adelanto, that have exemplified an entirely unrepairable & unnecessary detention system that must be abolished completely,” Ghandehari said, referring to ICE detention centers, in another message she sent out on X on Wednesday.
“Instead, President Biden is negotiating away the potential of this bright future and going back on his promises for a humane immigration system by using immigrants as bargaining chips to ram through his supplemental funding request,” she said.
ICE held an event in December 2022, where it hosted a panel featuring Peter Markowitz, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and director of the school’s Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic who once created his own “blueprint” to “allow us to abolish ICE.”
ICE didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. Ghandehari didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment regarding whether the ICE chief of staff was receptive to her demands.
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