“The Democrats have a death wish, in more ways than one - they actually want to abolish ICE. This should cost them heavily in the Midterms,” President Donald Trump tweeted. | Olivier Douliery/Getty Images Trump: Dems have ‘death wish’ in push to abolish ICE

The push from some Democrats to do away with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement amounts to a political “death wish,” President Donald Trump wrote online Thursday morning, predicting that the position will cost them votes in November’s midterm elections.

“The Democrats have a death wish, in more ways than one - they actually want to abolish ICE. This should cost them heavily in the Midterms,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Yesterday, the Republicans overwhelmingly passed a bill supporting ICE!”


ICE, the federal agency that handles deportations in addition to other responsibilities, has grown into a point of contention in recent weeks amid a larger controversy surrounding the president’s immigration policy. Calls from some Democrats for ICE to be abolished have grown in the wake of a White House policy that led to the separation of thousands of undocumented immigrant families who crossed the border illegally.

That policy was controversial enough for Trump to sign an executive order stopping it, but the status of many of the separated families remains unclear as the government works to reunify them.

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The bill to which Trump referred in his tweet was in fact a nonbinding resolution in support of ICE that passed by a vote of 244-35, with 133 Democrats voting present. Eighteen Democrats voted in favor of the measure, while 34 voted against it.