Warren joins calls to get rid of ICE

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Saturday joined calls from the left to get rid of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying it should be replaced with something new.

“The president’s deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and that works,” Warren said during a rally in Boston.

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“President Trump seems to think that the only way to have immigration rule is to rip parents from their family, is to treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists and to put children in cages,” she continued. “This is ugly and this is wrong and this is not the way to run our country.”

The Democratic senator had last week visited a processing center in McAllen, Texas, for immigrants entering the U.S. through the southwestern border.

Warren joins a small but growing contingent of Democrats in the Senate who are calling for ICE to be abolished or replaced as the issue quickly becomes a litmus test for Democrats.

On Thursday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) become the first sitting senator to call for ICE to be scrapped, saying the agency should be “reimagined.”

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have also called for the agency to be examined, but not fully abolished.

Their calls to get rid of and reform the agency come after the harsh backlash to Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that has led to the separation of families illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.