Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace has claimed she cruises the web for videos of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents dragging people into custody, saying she “can think of nothing more American”.
“I have to tell you – one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube these days are … court hearings where illegals are in court and Ice shows up to drag them out of court and deport them,” the South Carolina representative said during an appearance on Sunday on Fox Report Weekend.
Being in the US without legal status is generally a civil infraction rather than a criminal violation, and recent Ice data showed most people that the agency was taking into custody in the first several months of Donald Trump’s second presidency had no violent convictions.
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Nonetheless, on Sunday, Mace remarked: “I can think of nothing more American today than keeping our streets safer by getting those violent criminals out of the United States of America, and we all have Donald J Trump to thank for it.”
Some on both sides of the US’s political aisle, including from Trump’s own Republican party, met Mace’s comments with criticism. Former Republican congressman turned frequent Trump critic Joe Walsh published a post on X which said that “getting off on watching YouTube clips of immigrants at their court hearings grabbed by Ice is twisted & cruel”.
But, alluding to how Mace told Fox Report Weekend on Sunday that she would soon decide whether to mount a 2026 run for governor in Republican-voting South Carolina, Walsh added that “the cruelty is the point”.
“The … Republican party base gets off on this cruelty,” Walsh continued. “She knows who she’s talking to.”
Meanwhile, X user Richard Angwin, a self-styled progressive with more than 200,000 followers, wrote: “Nancy Mace’s gleeful endorsement of Ice’s courthouse ambushes on undocumented immigrants exposes her as a hypocritical opportunist who prioritizes performative cruelty over constitutional due process and American values of fairness.”
Mace appeared on Fox Report Weekend days after the Guardian reported on a video which showed immigration agents telling a teenage US citizen, “You’ve got no rights,” after he was pulled over while driving to his landscaping job in Florida alongside two undocumented men. The video put fresh scrutiny on the tactics of US law enforcement officials who are working under Trump administration orders to detain thousands of immigrants daily.
On Sunday, Mace told Fox Report Weekend host Jon Scott that she was championing proposed legislation that would “defund and take tax breaks away” from US cities that restrict how much local authorities cooperate with federal immigration officials.
Fox Weekend Report displayed a graphic during Mace’s interview which demonstrated how Ice had issued fewer than 9,500 immigration-related detainers in New York City – which limits its cooperation with federal immigration officials – during Joe Biden’s presidency. By contrast, during the first seven months of Trump’s second presidency, Ice had issued more than 6,000 such detainers there.
Mace has been in Congress since early 2021.
The former South Carolina state house member has seized national headlines through her vocal opposition to transgender women being allowed to use women’s restrooms. And she has repeatedly directly attacked the first openly trans member of Congress, US House member Sarah McBride of Delaware, who first took office in January.
In February, Mace also gained significant media attention after accusing four men – including her former fiance – of rape, physical abuse and sexual misconduct during a nearly hourlong speech on the US House floor.
She named and displayed photos of the alleged abusers during a 50-minute presentation that day, saying to them rhetorically: “You’ve booked yourself a one-way ticket to hell. It is nonstop. There are no connections.”