Intercept - WITH BOLD IMMIGRATION PLAN, BERNIE SANDERS BECOMES THE ONLY CANDIDATE TO CALL FOR BREAK UP OF ICE AND CBP
You can read the full policy "A Welcoming and Safe America for All" here.
One piece of this is the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which would "provide domestic workers with at least a $15 minimum wage, strong protections for collective bargaining, workers' rights, workplace safety, and fair scheduling," regardless of immigration status.
"For too long, employers have exploited undocumented immigrants and guest workers to violate labor laws, skirt the minimum wage, and maximize their own profits," the plan reads. "Large corporations target vulnerable communities as a source of labor and use their immigration status to retaliate when workers stand up for their rights."
The release of Sanders's plan comes after months of scrutiny from leftists and liberals over his immigration policy — long considered to be one of his primary weaknesses. His plan follows the common left positions on immigration, including reinstating and expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program; ending for-profit detention; and overturning the Muslim ban.
Notably, he also goes further than even his fellow progressive hopeful, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for full demilitarization of the border. To break up ICE and CBP, under Sanders's platform, their functions would be redistributed to other federal agencies. Under a Sanders administration, "deportation, enforcement, border and investigatory authority would return to the Department of Justice," naturalization and citizenship authority would go to the State Department, and customs authority would return to the Treasury.
Sanders's long track record defending labor interests has seemingly sometimes stood in opposition to his otherwise pro-immigrant rhetoric. His policy platform is an attempt to reconcile the two: a worker-centric immigration agenda that bolsters immigrants' labor rights and offers them a part of the social safety net through programs like Medicare-for-all.
The most sweeping part of the plan: a proposal to use executive action to protect unauthorized immigrants who have lived in the US for more than five years from deportation, which, according to the Pew Research Center's estimate, would cover almost 9 million people — more than any other legalization plan in the field.
You can read the full policy "A Welcoming and Safe America for All" here.