‘Radical Leftist’: Senate Poised To Confirm Biden Nominee Who Is Anti-ICE

‘Radical Leftist’: Senate Poised To Confirm Biden Nominee Who Is Anti-ICE

Jennie Taer on May 11, 2022

• The Senate is likely to vote this week on President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who has a history of opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of surveillance.
• “No Republican on the Commerce Committee – a panel with a long tradition of bipartisan consensus – has supported Bedoya, because he’s a partisan who’s unqualified to fill this position. The Senate should reject his nomination and President Biden should nominate someone else who’s qualified,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
• Bedoya expressed regret in November after senators grilled him over his past statements.

The Senate is set to vote Wednesday on whether to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who has in the past criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over its deportation methods.

Many Senate Republicans are against the nomination of Alvaro Bedoya, a Georgetown Law professor who founded its Center on Privacy & Technology, arguing that he’s too far left for the post. Bedoya has made a number of statements against ICE’s use of personal data from private companies to track those in the country illegally to deport them.

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz argued that Bedoya lacks any qualifications for the role and is merely another radical appointee of Biden’s, telling the DCNF that “it’s become clear that Alvaro Bedoya would be a rubber stamp for President Biden’s failed radical agenda.”

Other critics of Bedoya argue that he could use his position in the FTC to accomplish his political agenda regarding immigration.

“Alvaro Bedoya is the wrong nominee for the Federal Trade Commission at the wrong time. Our nation’s economy is teetering and corporate wokism is a plague, the last thing America needs is for the Senate to confirm a radical leftist enabling the political weaponization of this extremely powerful federal agency,” Americans for Limited Government President Richard Manning told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Bedoya in February 2021 tweeted that ICE is “an out-of-control domestic surveillance agency that peers into all our lives,” referring to the agency’s reported use of data shared from private companies to track people who are in the country illegally.

Maryland police have no business working with ICE.

Maryland police have no business working with ICE.

Maryland police have no business working with ICE.

Maryland police have no business working with ICE. https://t.co/MakMtx70Dp

— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) April 10, 2021

Bedoya previously took issue with a data analytics firm Palantir’s partnership with ICE, also arguing that the agency overstepped when it came to privacy of people in the country illegally when it began buying data from utility companies.

“Palantir’s case management software, data analysis and visualization software, and mobile app are the final layer of ICE’s vast surveillance and data sharing network,” Bedoya wrote in a Slate column published September 2020.

“I have worked in technology policy for more than a decade. In most meetings, I am the only Latino in the room. I’m almost always the only Latinx immigrant. Much of my work focuses on how surveillance affects immigrants and people of color. Yet, even for me, it is hard to see the technology behind ICE’s brutality,” he added.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday that Bedoya is a “radical partisan.”

“Mr. Bedoya is such a poor fit that the first time Leader Schumer tried to shut down debate on his nomination, he lacked the votes and had to call it off,” McConnell said, adding that “Democrats want this hardcore partisan confirmed very badly. So here we are again.”

Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee Roger Wicker said on March 29 that Bedoya’s criticism of ICE should be disqualifying for a role with the FTC.

“Mr. Bedoya has a long history of divisive social media statements, including calling for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be shut down; calling on local law enforcement agencies not to cooperate with ICE; accusing Cabinet-level departments of committing human rights abuses; and even demanding that several of our colleagues in the Senate resign,” Wicker wrote.

Cruz told the DCNF that the Senate should reject Bedoya and allow Biden to try again with someone new.

“No Republican on the Commerce Committee – a panel with a long tradition of bipartisan consensus – has supported Bedoya, because he’s a partisan who’s unqualified to fill this position. The Senate should reject his nomination and President Biden should nominate someone else who’s qualified,” Cruz said.

Bedoya told lawmakers in November after they grilled him over his past statements that “looking back, there are many instances in which I said or shared things that I regret today.”

“What’s more, it could not be clearer to me that the role of commissioner is a law enforcement function that will require me to set aside all of my personal political beliefs and work across the aisle to protect American consumers and businesses,” he added.

Bedoya declined to comment when reached by the Daily Caller News Foundation.