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From #OccupyICE Encampments to the Campaign Trail, Call Grows to Abolish 'Unaccountable and Inhumane' Agency

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As calls to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reached the halls of Congress this week, with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) calling to abolish the agency that’s enforced the Trump administration’s family separation policy, direct actions aimed at shutting down ICE’s facilities are spreading across the country.

With outrage growing this month over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, demonstrators in Portland, Oregon congregated outside ICE’s facility in their city on June 17 to hold a candlelight vigil. Many protesters have remained outside the building ever since, blocking the entrance in an effort to keep deportation trials from proceeding.

In the weeks that have followed, similar actions have cropped up at ICE’s offices in several other cities across the country.

More than 30 protesters temporarily shut down ICE’s operations in Detroit on Monday, with plans to stay at the agency’s field office until June 30.

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Over the weekend, the #OccupyICE movement came to Los Angeles, with demonstrators blocking the agency’s vans from leaving its driveway.

Protesters in New York began their #OccupyICE demonstration last week, forcing all of Monday’s planned immigration hearings to be postponed.

“Make no mistake, ICE is a white supremacist organization following the orders of a white supremacist administration, and the intent of these policies is to discourage all nonwhite immigration…and to preserve the power of the rapidly shrinking white majority,” said Occupy ICE PDX in a statement to other activists last week. “It is not only possible to imagine a world without ICE, an organization which has only existed for the last 15 years, but necessary and our duty to make it a reality.”

As Common Dreams reported on Monday, Pocan introduced legislation to abolish ICE, accusing the agency of “tearing apart families and ripping at the moral fabric of our nation.”

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