A fresh wave
of outrage over the Trump administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has surged after two high-profile events involving ICE in the span of a week: the shooting of a young father in New York City last Thursday, and the Monday morning
Homeland Security Investigations raid
on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home.
Reporting from the
Wall Street Journal
suggests that the raid was a part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to strip the Minnesota Democrat of her U.S. citizenship. Omar arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Somalia and became a naturalized citizen in 2000, long before the start of her political career. The outspoken progressive congresswoman has since become a foe of President Donald Trump; in a statement, her spokesperson condemned the raid on her home as “an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.”
Don’t Stop at ICE, Says Progressive Dem: Abolish the Department of Homeland Security
Omar’s House colleague, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., argues this sort of weaponization is an
inherent feature
of the Department of Homeland Security, which was
established in 2003
as part of the George W. Bush administration’s mounting war on terror. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks with Ramirez about a new bill she introduced on Tuesday to
abolish DHS
and what the raid on Omar’s home reveals about the department.
“The Department of Homeland Security cannot be reformed. It should be dismantled,” said Ramirez. “What they did — just three weeks from an election — was to attempt to create such paralysis on everyday people. … If they can do this to one of my colleagues, they can do that to anyone. And it should concern everyone.”
Washington also speaks with
Rozina Ali
— a journalist covering the war on terror, Islamophobia, the Middle East, South Asia, and literature — and
Will Sommer
, a senior reporte
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