The Patriot Post® · Tlaib Calls for Defunding CBP, ICE, and DHS

Sometimes we wonder what makes them say such idiotic things. Marxism is one thing, after all, but insanity is another. Take Democrat Representative and “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib, for example. The other day, on a video interview with some fellow-traveling hard-lefties, she actually said, “We must eliminate funding for CPB [sic], ICE, and their parent organization, DHS.”

That’s right. Tlaib wants to do away with Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and, since she’s in the neighborhood, the entire 230,000-employee Department of Homeland Security. See for yourself:

Again, why would she say something so obnoxious? Why, given the ongoing calamity on our southern border — the abject humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of illegals have already streamed across and human traffickers and drug smugglers have operated with impunity amid the all-but open-borders posture of the Biden administration — would she call for the abolition of the very agencies on the front lines? Is she serious, or is she just trolling us?

Our sense is she’s dead serious. What triggered her? A question about the Biden administration’s day-late, dollar-short request for additional funding for border technology to support CBP. As Fox News reports:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) border request includes $665 million in investments toward modernizing land ports of entry and $47 million to invest in detection capabilities in addition to investments in border surveillance technology.

But activists have expressed concern that such funding, along with other methods like facial recognition and DNA testing, are used to ultimately prevent migrants from entering the U.S. Tlaib was asked how they could “turn the tide” at the congressional level on the funding for such methods.

We’ll say this: Eliminating every border enforcement mechanism available to us would certainly “turn the tide.” Clearly, even the thought of a secure border is too much for Tlaib to bear.

“Time after time,” she said, “we have seen it as advocates on the ground … that these agencies are inept to humanely guiding migrants through our immigration system and instead they further continue to terrorize migrant communities located within our communities.”

At least Tlaib isn’t blaming Donald Trump for Joe Biden’s border mess. But she doesn’t have to — not when she has Leftmedia lickspittles like NBC’s Hayes Brown to do the dirty work. “Trump’s border security theater hasn’t ended,” he wrote recently on the NBC News website, “it’s gotten worse. Now GOP governors are sending National Guard members to Texas and Arizona as political props.”

If by “theater” Brown meant “effectiveness,” he might have a point. But he didn’t, so he doesn’t. National Review’s Jim Geraghty rightly takes him to task. “First, it’s amazing that former president Donald Trump is managing to ‘worsen’ ‘border security theater’ almost six months after leaving office,” writes Geraghty. “Trump no longer holds any authority over any portion of the military, U.S. National Guard, or Border Patrol officers or policies. If he did, things would be quite different.”

Things would be different all right, but the mainstream media would still be churning out fake news. As Geraghty points out, Biden’s own DHS requested the additional Guard support for its Customs and Border Protection efforts, and it wasn’t just “GOP governors” deploying those “political props” — unless Wisconsin Democrat Governor Tony Evers, who committed 125 of his state’s National Guardsmen to the effort, is a closet Republican.

The Democrats have a hard-earned reputation for being weak on border security. And no amount of media misdirection is going to change it.