Biden admin gives award to chief immigration official who called to 'abolish ICE' and defund Border Patrol

On Wednesday, the Biden administration issued an award to a top immigration official who publicly advocated to "abolish ICE."

Daily Caller reports that Avideh Moussavian, chief of the US Citizenship and Immigration Service's (USCIS) Office of Policy & Strategy, was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security for her team's efforts in expanding the legal processes for immigrants to enter the United States.

According to a statement from the DHS, the agency honored Moussavian's Advance Travel Authorization Team with a Secretary's Award for Innovation.

"This cross-component team collectively designed, developed, and implemented a new process to enable individuals who have U.S.-based supporters to be considered for and granted authorization to travel to the United States and seek parole at the port of entry," the statement reads.

"This innovative process required DHS to build a new system, and fuse new workflows across components, which bolstered the vetting process and provided an orderly procedure to allow those seeking parole to receive travel authorization and come to the United States. This new approach has since been adopted to address growing humanitarian crises and surging irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere," said DHS.

However, Daily Caller revealed that Moussavian has a history of anti-American sentiments, which includes advocating and working for agencies that support defunding and/or abolishing US Border Patrol and Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).

Before joining her role with the Biden administration, Moussavian worked for the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) between 2013 and 2019, according to the outlet. The organization is far-left in ideology and seeks to end immigration detention.

In 2018, Moussavian advocated to "abolish ICE" and called the agency a "hate group" in a post on X. She said that ICE makes "workplaces less safe."

In 2019, Moussavian called for the defunding of the two agencies in a post on X, writing: "Amazing work reminding appropriators to cut ICE and CBP funding and to limit DHS' transfer authority so it can't use money grabs from other accounts to fund agencies that allow children like Jakelin Caal Maquin to die in their custody. #DefundHate."

According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website, "Avideh Moussavian was selected as the chief of the Office of Policy and Strategy on March 13, 2023. Prior to this position, Moussavian was a senior advisor in the Office of the Director since March 2022."

"Since joining USCIS, she has worked on a range of issues in furtherance of USCIS’ humanitarian mission and in support of expanding lawful pathways. This includes supporting the launch and implementation of Uniting for Ukraine, the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and process enhancements for deferred action requests related to labor agency investigations, as well as representing the agency in stakeholder engagements and Congressional briefings," her bio states on the website.