It’s always fun to see what happens when politicians admit their campaign positions shouldn’t be taken seriously – especially when it’s a position which vaulted them into the limelight.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist congressional candidate from New York, is the latest to prove this particular refrain in a tweet ‘defending’ herself from criticism from Town Hall’s Katie Pavlich over the deportation of Nazi Jakiw Palij.

#AbolishICE means not having an agency that incarcerates children and sexually assaults women with impunity.

It does not mean abolish deportation.

Also, I have no problem saying white supremacy has no place in this country.

It’s the GOP that struggles to say that. https://t.co/7gbXezIhu5

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 21, 2018

Oh, the absolute shock the alleged future of the Democratic Party is perfectly fine with restricted immigration, quotas, and a confusing visa system! Note sarcasm, as it’s not shocking at all.

After all, Ocasio-Cortez may have hinged her candidacy on democratic-socialism and #AbolishICE, but her website is rather vague at exactly what she’d do with current immigration law.

It’s time to abolish ICE, clear the path to citizenship, and protect the rights of families to remain together.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created in 2003, in the same suite of post-9/11 legislation as the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. Its founding was part of an unchecked expansion of executive powers that led to the widespread erosion of Americans’ civil rights. Unlike prior immigration enforcement under the INS, ICE operates outside the scope of the Department of Justice and is unaccountable to our nation’s standards of due process.

Now we see the consequences: young children are being ripped from their parents and kept in detention centers without due process and without accountability to Congress.

As overseen by the Trump administration, ICE operates with virtually no accountability, ripping apart families and holding our friends and neighbors indefinitely in inhumane detention centers scattered across the United States. Alex believes that if we are to uphold civic justice, we must abolish ICE and see to it that our undocumented neighbors are treated with the dignity and respect owed to all people, regardless of citizenship status.

It shouldn’t be surprising to see this as it falls in line with Democratic Socialists of America’s stance of focusing on the “undocumented immigrants” in the U.S. with their 2013 bilge about comprehensive immigration reform and claiming “the struggle for just immigration reform as an integral part of the ongoing struggle for workers’ rights and for democracy.” How trite!

The Senate’s democratic socialist in chief, Bernie Sanders, is also not known for his support of unrestricted immigration. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the issue to Vox in 2015.

Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal…That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States…It would make everybody in America poorer —you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you’re a white high school graduate, it’s 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we’ve got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don’t do that by making people in this country even poorer.

Sanders 2016 acolyte Richard Eskow later suggested those who favor unfettered immigration “sometimes comes embarrassingly close to making the kind of argument that was once deployed in defense of slavery: Sure, they have a tough life in this country, but it must be so much better for them here than it was in their old country.” How immigration friendly!

Socialists have long been against more open immigration with the USSR’s “Iron Curtain” of not letting anyone into their borders. China only recently made their immigration laws more liberalized – but still restricted. The socialist paradise (note sarcasm) of Cuba also has stricter immigration laws – for visitors and expats – and only recently slightly loosened them for people of Cuban descent. The notion these countries wanted or want to take in more people is as real as those who believe getting bitten by a radioactive spider will give them superpowers.

This is why those who believe Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk are serious about loosening American immigration laws through their #AbolishICE calls are mistaken. The Democrats aren’t interested in letting more people into the U.S., they just want to be the ones saying “We love you!” to illegal immigrants because they might get more votes. The reality is they favor the same restrictive immigration policies as White House senior adviser Stephen Miller.

Republicans should realize this and just laugh at these calls to #AbolishICE because there wouldn’t be any real changes to U.S. immigration policy or enforcement. ICE would get a new coat of paint, name, and that’s it. It’s a talking point for votes.

It would be better for Ocasio-Cortez opponents to focus on her universal health care, revitalization of the Post Office, gun control, and federal job guarantees positions. Those are the ones where the most damage to not only the American economy but freedom, in general, would happen.