espite what Republicans and some mainstream Democrats would have us believe, half of Americans agree that ICE should no longer exist. Progressive candidates across the country have taken note and are using “Abolish ICE” as a rallying cry to organize their communities and win elections.

Rep. Analilia Mejía (D-NJ) is one such progressive. She campaigned on abolishing ICE against ten other candidates, some of whom had raised much more money, and won her primary and then the special election. The day after she was sworn in, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) announced Mejía’s appointment to the House Committee on Homeland Security, the body that oversees ICE and the Trump regime’s immigration terror campaign, joining others on the committee who have called for ICE’s abolishment and redirecting funding to community-based organizations.

Shortly after her appointment, Mejía participated in a hearing of the Homeland Security Committee, asking witnesses whom immigration agents had shot and assaulted what “meaningful actions” lawmakers could take to bring them justice. Most said they wanted accountability for the agents who hurt them. But the Rev. David Black, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, whom federal immigration agents shot multiple times in the head, face, and body with pepper balls and shoved to the ground when he protested outside an ICE prison in Broadview, Illinois, last year, had a different answer.

“With respect to the members who believe in reform, I believe that this department and administration really need an exorcist. That’s my opinion as a pastor,” he said. “I would like people to understand in this Congress and in the United States, that what we are facing, the evil we are facing from this administration, goes beyond political solutions and goes beyond reform. It requires spiritual solutions.”