Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdulrahman El-Sayed told a Grand Rapids debate that ICE is terrorizing American streets, while still saying violent offenders should be deported under a reconstituted system.
At a Thursday debate in Grand Rapids, Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdulrahman El-Sayed answered a direct question about abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement by attacking the agency’s mission and the Trump administration’s approach to the border.
Breitbart News reported that WOOD TV8 moderator Rick Albin pressed El-Sayed on deportation after violent crime, and the candidate answered yes, then pivoted hard against ICE itself.
Albin put the scenario in plain terms. An illegal immigrant in Michigan commits a violent crime, serves the sentence, and faces a deportation order. Under El-Sayed’s system, would that person be deported?
"You’ve made your position clear. You want to abolish ICE. Let me give you a scenario. If an undocumented immigrant in Michigan commits a violent crime, serves a sentence, and has a deportation order, under your system, would he be deported?"
El-Sayed said yes. Then he accused ICE of operating outside constitutional bounds and of terrorizing communities rather than enforcing immigration law.
"Yes. But you don’t have to do that by violating the whole Constitution in the way that ICE has been enabled to do by this rogue administration. ICE right now is not about immigration enforcement. ICE is about terrorizing our streets,"
That framing turns a core federal enforcement agency into the villain. It also sits against the record the federal government has published on border results under President Trump.
El-Sayed tied his charge to ICE-involved shootings in Minneapolis. He named Renee Good and Alex Pretti and said, “They killed two people.” The Step 1 reporting carries that claim as his statement at the debate, not as an independent finding on those cases.
He then called for a return to something like the old Immigration and Naturalization Service model, plus a pathway to citizenship for people he described as stuck in limbo.
"... I think we can go back to an era like INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] when we enforced immigration policy at the edge of the Constitution, and we respected the Constitution in doing it. But I also think we need a pathway to citizenship for folks who are stuck in limbo right now."
In the same exchange he attacked what he called a “tough guy attitude” on immigration. He said it fails to keep the country safe, fails to fund the southern border, and weaponizes a federal agency for political ends.
"You’ve got this tough guy attitude to immigration that’s not keeping us safe,"
"In fact, it’s terrorizing folks in our streets. It’s not funding the southern border, which needs to be kept safe. But what it is doing, it’s weaponizing an agency of the government at the tune of Donald Trump and his goons."
Voters heard a candidate who will deport after a violent crime and a final order, and who still wants ICE gone, replaced by a softer institutional setup, and paired with citizenship for people already here illegally.
Federal figures cited in the same reporting cut the other way. In September the federal government announced 16 months of zero releases at the southern border. Daily apprehensions were down 94 percent from the Biden administration. Crossings fell to levels not seen in more than three decades.
President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” allotted $46.5 billion to a smart border wall. That is funding and enforcement at the border, not the absence of it.
El-Sayed’s debate answer treated those results as theater and cast ICE as a street threat. The numbers describe sustained control after years of record chaos under the prior administration.
Albin’s question forced a choice. El-Sayed would not defend open non-enforcement after a violent crime and a deportation order. He said the person would be removed.
He then spent the rest of the answer dismantling the agency that does that work. ICE, in his telling, is no longer about immigration enforcement. It is about terrorizing streets. The administration that rebuilt border control is “rogue.” The people carrying out the mission are “goons.”
That is the contradiction Michigan voters are being asked to accept. Deport the violent offender. Abolish or gut the agency that finds him, holds him, and removes him. Promise constitutional purity while demanding a citizenship path for people who entered or stayed illegally and remain in legal limbo.
INS-era nostalgia does not erase the scale of the modern illegal population or the incentives created by weak interior enforcement. A pathway to citizenship for people “stuck in limbo” is an amnesty by another name. Pairing it with an ICE teardown tells illegal immigrants and the cartels that watch U.S. politics exactly where the pressure will ease.
Grand Rapids heard the polished version: enforce at the edge of the Constitution, remove the worst offenders, restore dignity. The operative parts were the attack on ICE, the citizenship path, and the claim that current enforcement terrorizes American streets.
Secure borders and lawful immigration require agencies willing to arrest, detain, and deport. Calling that work street terror while pocketing the “yes” on a single violent-crime hypo is not a serious enforcement program. It is a campaign line built to sound tough for one answer and soft for everything that follows.
