'Qualified immunity:' Michigan congressman makes new push to dismantle ICE
'Qualified immunity' debate and new push to dismantle ICE
Congressman Shri Thanedar represents Detroit and several Downriver communities. He says he will now introduce the Abolish ICE Act, days after an ICE agent shot a woman during a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minneapolis.
DETROIT (FOX 2) - The fallout continues following the deadly shooting of a woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier in the week.
Now, a member of Congress from Metro Detroit is calling for ICE to be abolished. He’s also targeting legal protections those agents can claim if prosecuted.
Big picture view:
Congressman Shri Thanedar represents Detroit and several Downriver communities. He says he will now introduce the Abolish ICE Act, days after an ICE agent shot a woman during a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minneapolis.
The congressman says the bill would end the agency and its enforcement authority after the death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, who was accused by Trump administration officials of impeding ICE operations.
Thanedar also says his bill would end a doctrine known as "qualified immunity," a defense that gives law enforcement officers a significant layer of protection, potentially making prosecution of the ICE agent, if charged, much harder to carry out.
"My bill takes away that qualified immunity because they need to respect the law," Thanedar said. "Their actions need to be with respect to the law, and if they break the law, they need to be punished, and they need to be personally liable for it. There should not be any more qualified immunity for ICE agents."
"It’s this doctrine that gives extra protection to the police, so even when they do something wrong, it essentially has to be so clearly wrong that if it’s not clearly very wrong, there’s no case," said attorney Jonathan Marko. "You don’t even get a chance. A jury cannot even decide which is kind of antithetical to our constitutional system, which was premised upon government abuse and put the process with the jury."
What's next:
Congressman Thanedar says he will be working to build bipartisan support for his bill to abolish ICE. I asked him how realistic passage of such a bill might be.
He says he will keep at it and even take it up again if Democrats flip the House in the midterms this November. The House is currently controlled by the GOP.