Queens reps blast ICE but won’t call for its abolition

Congressmembers Gregory Meeks and Grace Meng spoke alongside Borough President Donovan Richards and local clergy on Thursday to discuss the Department of Homeland Security and ICE raids.  Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach 

By Ryan Schwach

Two of Queens’ longest-serving members of Congress sharply criticized the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement on Thursday, but stopped short of joining fellow Democrats calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At a press conference at Borough Hall Thursday, Democratic Representatives Gregory Meeks and Grace Meng called for more “accountability” for DHS, but wouldn’t go as far as others who have called for the full abolition of ICE, whose agents have killed two people in Minneapolis in the past several weeks.

Both representatives, who last week voted against increasing DHS funding, said that the “power of the purse” and increased regulations are the answer to reigning in ICE.

“If ICE goes by the mission that it has had previously, where you're looking to get individuals who are illegal and have committed a crime, especially violent crimes, then those individuals are who ICE should be targeting," Meeks said when asked if he was in favor of abolishing ICE. “That's what was talked about.”

Meng, who is preparing to bring forward legislation that would force ICE agents to wear clear identification, said addressing ICE’s alleged abuses goes deeper than a “two-word slogan.”

“ICE as it is, cannot exist,” she said. “That's why [Meeks] and I, and most of the Democratic caucus, voted against funding at this time, because we believe that there are changes that have to be made. There need to be guardrails. There needs to be more transparency and accountability.”

“They need to prioritize public safety [and] community safety over militarization,” she added.

Meng and Meeks voted against funding DHS along with all but seven House Democrats – a group that included Queens Rep. Tom Suozzi.

“Let's not fund them until they change,” said Meeks.

That power now ultimately lies with the Senate, who on Friday were in the throes of a potential government shutdown fight centered around whether or not DHS should be included in the pivotal funding package.

Unlike Meeks and Meng, Borough President Donovan Richards called for the abolition of ICE during Thursday’s press conference alongside the congressional representatives.

“I'll go a little further than our congressmembers, because I can say it, we have to abolish ICE,” he said. “You can't fix what they're doing.”

In his remarks, Richards referred to ICE as both the “American Taliban,” and the “Gestapo.”

“The bottom line is in its current form, it needs to be torn down from the ground up and built back up to what it was supposed to be,” he said.

Meeks described Trump’s immigration policies as “authoritarian,” and agreed with another speaker who compared ICE’s enforcement to Nazi Germany.

“When individuals came busting out of cars with masks on, breaking out doors and indiscriminately taking people into custody…history shows that did take place in Nazi Germany,” said Meeks, the leader of the Queens County Democratic Party.

Some of Meeks and Meng’s congressional colleagues in Queens, including Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called for ICE to be abolished.

“Congress cannot continue to fund this rogue agency,” Velázquez said following the ICE killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has also called for the end to ICE, which was established in 2002 following the Sept. 11 terror attack.

During the Thursday press conference, officials said that while ICE hasn’t made its presence as known in New York City as it has in Minneapolis, sporadic enforcement actions have taken place throughout the five boroughs, including in Queens.

“Queens might not look occupied like Minneapolis, but the mental and emotional scars our families bear are just the same,” Richards said. “Anybody who doesn't believe ICE is here, we get the reports.”

Vanessa Ordonez, the director of immigrant affairs in Richards’ office said that ICE sightings are common across the borough’s immigrant communities.

“Basically any immigrant hub that you can imagine in New York City, that's where they're at,” she said. “We've seen them in Bayside, Sunnyside, Woodside, you name it, Jamaica, by the Home Depot. Anywhere there's an immigrant hub, they're there.”