WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 04: U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) speaks during a news conference with members of the Democratic Women's Caucus prior to State of the Union at the U.S. Capitol on February 4, 2020 in Washington, DC. The group of women is wearing white to commemorate the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Photo by Alex Edelman/Getty Images)
The Democratic congresswoman Joe Biden has slated for Secretary of the Interior advocated for defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2018.
At the time, Deb Haaland was running in a Democratic primary to represent New Mexico’s 1st Congressional district.
Haaland cited the supposed harm of White American culture as justification for defunding the agency, seeming to raise questions as to whether she supported its full abolition.
“As a Native American woman,” Haaland told professional activist Sean McElwee in 2018, “children in my family for generations were torn from their parents because of government policies, to be forcibly assimilated into white culture. The pain and trauma of that separation lasts generations, and my heart breaks for the children facing this same fate in Trump detention camps today.”
Donald Trump didn’t begin detention of minor illegal aliens in ICE custody as President, with the practice having been utilized for decades. Many minors are used by human smugglers and drug cartels in an attempt to evade immigration detention, with DNA frequently data revealing that illegal alien adults “rent” children with hopes of receiving amnesty as a family unit.
Haaland stands to become the most far-left member of Biden’s cabinet should she be confirmed, supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. The Department of the Interior has wide-ranging powers to determine lawful use of public lands, often clashing with residents of rural communities and ranchers whose communities rely on the use of federally owned land. Haaland may have the most leeway to attack the energy industry if confirmed as Secretary of the Interior, potentially exposing Biden’s contradictory claims to oppose the criminalization of fracking as a lie.