House Republicans claimed a political victory Wednesday after the House voted 244-35 in favor of officially supporting the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a vote intended to force Democrats to take a position amid calls from progressives to abolish the agency.
But Democrats largely avoided taking any position at all. Instead, they tried to refocus the immigration debate away from ICE and toward the ongoing controversy over President Trump’s policies for handling asylum claims and the separation of families at the southern U.S. border.
The split is the latest evidence that immigration has become one of the biggest and most intensely partisan issues of the 2018 midterm elections.
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