Houston Chronicle 7/6/2018 By Jeremy Wallace
Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s nuanced position on abolishing the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws has opened a new line of attack from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz as the two rivals continue to travel the state in advance of the fall Senate election.
O’Rourke has stopped short of calling for the elimination of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as some Democrats have done recently, but his stance on the topic has produced enough gray area for Cruz to seize on the issue as a key dividing line between the two men who are battling in one of the most high profile mid-term elections in the nation.
“I’ve been the leading defender in the Senate of securing the border, building the wall, of keeping this country safe and stopping illegal immigration,†Cruz said in Longview in northeast Texas as part of an 11-city tour through the state this week. “In contrast, my opponent Democrat Beto O’Rourke supports sanctuary cities, supports open borders, and just this week he said he was ‘open to abolishing ICE.â€
Cruz called eliminating ICE “radical†and “nuts.â€
As he left a town hall in Hillsboro, about 160 miles away from where Cruz made his comments 18 hours earlier, O’Rourke said he does not want to eliminate ICE. He said the point he’s been making on the road is that it doesn’t matter if agencies like ICE and Homeland Security are eliminated if it is not addressing the practices in those agencies. He said that’s what he and others are seeking to change in light of the family separations that have occurred on the border. He said he’s willing to discuss eliminating ICE, but that alone will not solve the problem.
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