GOP eager for vote on liberal Democrats’ move to abolish ICE

WASHINGTON — Liberal Democrats unveiled doomed legislation Thursday aimed at abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, their eyes focused on galvanizing voters for the midterm elections.

The House’s top Republican scoffed that the measure makes him “feel very good” about November. GOP leaders moved toward scheduling a vote on the measure in hopes of embarrassing and dividing Democrats.

The dueling views of the bill’s potential impact are the latest example of how immigration looms as a vote-moving issue this fall, when Democrats hope to wrest control of the House and perhaps the Senate from the GOP. Public concern over the problem shows no signs of receding soon, as the Trump administration struggles to reunite more than 2,000 migrant children they’ve separated from parents caught entering the U.S. illegally.

“It’s the craziest position I’ve ever seen, and they are just tripping over themselves to move too far to the left,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Thursday about Democrats’ bill. “They’re out of the mainstream of America, and that’s one of the reasons why I feel very good about this fall.”

The measure erasing ICE has no chance of going anywhere in the GOP-run House.

For liberal Democratic activists, the agency has become a symbol of President Donald Trump’s aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, and abolishing it has morphed into a campaign rallying cry.

“The president is using ICE as a mass-deportation force to rip apart the moral fabric of our nation,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., the lead sponsor. A day earlier, he said in a brief interview, “This is where the grass roots are.”