Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) said the “sadistic policies and practices” of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have “got to go.”

Patrick said, “We clearly need some alternative to the policies in ICE whether you call it ICE or call it something else. The sadistic policies and practices of ICE today have got to go. You know separating families, the walking away from DACA, the deportation of spouses of immigrants who serve in the military today, Really?”

He continued, “We are better than that and you know, the opportunity to have comprehensive immigration reform has been on the table before there is bipartisan support for it. It needs to come back. We need to be serious about it. And the only reason that it doesn’t happen today is because I believe our president wants to keep it as an open wound so he can rally his base or the extreme of his base around it for political reasons.”

He added, “We need somebody to do the job of ICE whether we keep it as in the name of ICE or give that assignment to some other agency with a different name is not as important to me. We need better policies. I think the name of the agency is less important than getting the policies right and what we have today are the wrong policies and wrong practices.”

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