Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Voted Against Reopening Government Over ICE Funding Weeks After Voting For It
Rising Democratic star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was the only Democrat to vote against a bill to end the Trump shutdown Wednesday because the measure included funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but just three weeks ago, Ocasio-Cortez voted in favor of just such a measure.
On Wednesday afternoon, Ocasio-Cortez joined 183 Republicans and zero other Democrats in voting “no” on House Joint Resolution 28, which would have funded government through February 28. In the titles of a since-deleted Instagram video, AOC explained her vote against the measure.
“Most of our votes are pretty straightforward, but today was a tough/nuanced call,” the titles read. “We didn’t vote with the party because one of the spending bills included ICE funding, and our community felt strongly about not funding that.”
The video featured Ocasio-Cortez shouting out her policy team, including Dan Riffle, who recently said that “every billionaire is a policy failure.”
The vote marks a shift from AOC’s first day on the job, when she joined every Democrat and five Republicans in voting for a bill that would have funded government, including ICE, until February 8.
A few days after that vote, Ocasio-Cortez blasted the agency in her response to Trump’s Oval Office address. She noted that “on the day of Christmas, a child died in ICE custody,” a reference to the second of two children who died while in custody last month.
“The president should not be asking for more money to an agency that has systematically violated human rights,” she added. “The president should be really defending why we are funding such an agency at all, because right now, what we are seeing is death. Right now what we are seeing is the violation of human rights.”
Just as people criticized AOC for voting in favor of reopening the government three weeks ago with funding, there will be others who do so over her “no” vote. These bills also fund key priorities like the Violence Against Women Act, and voting to end the shutdown is a priority for most Americans.
As Ocasio-Cortez’s video says, these are tough calls, but if her community reached out and told her that voting against ICE was more important, then she was arguably just doing her job.
Watch the Instagram video above.
