Assembly Rep. Francesca Hong, a leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said on a left-wing podcast that if elected governor of Wisconsin, she would deploy the National Guard to arrest ICE agents in order to protect illegal immigrants living in the state, the Heartland Post has learned exclusively.
“I don’t want us to continue to rely on law enforfement,” Hong said during an October 31st appearance on Resistance Radio, “but if the National Guard has to be out here arresting ICE agents, you have to meet state-sanctioned violence with, you know, parts of the state sometimes.”
Hong, a Democratic Socialist who has repeatedly made inflammatory anti-ICE comments, was responding to a question from Resistance Radio host Dane Snudden about the importance of Wisconsin’s next governor adequately resisting President Trump.
“How important is it that we have a leader, especially with everything going on, that is going to stand up to Trump?” Snudden asked.
“Fighting for Wisconsin people, knowing that you have a responsibility to protect everyone,” Hong answered. “It’s gotta be done through both policy and communications and actions that set the tone.”
The first such action was a promise to use National Guard troops to arrest ICE agents who commit what she termed “state-sanctioned violence.” She has repeatedly used that phrase to describe immigration enforcement by ICE agents, whom she has also called “enforcers of fascism.”
“Merely removing enforcers of fascism is not enough,” she said in a post on X in January. “We need investments in community care not state sanctioned violence.”
Later that month, she took to Instagram to call ICE “the leading edge of Trump’s fascist agenda” and accused agents of “tearing apart families and our communities with unconstitutional practices that threaten public safety.”
As a member of the Wisconsin Assembly, Hong last year introduced a package of bills aimed at preventing ICE from conducting law enforcement operations in the state. One of those measures would ban local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with ICE in any way, while another would prohibit illegal immigrants from being detained in Wisconsin’s jails. The bills, critics said, would have made Wisconsin a sanctuary state. They did not come up for a vote in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
If elected Governor, Hong would likely make passage of those bills a priority, as she has made thwarting ICE a central focus of her campaign. Deploying the National Guard to arrest agents, though, is blatantly unconstitutional.
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, known as the “Supremacy Clause,” prohibits governors or state legislatures from actively interfering in federal law enforcement operations. Longstanding Supreme Court precedent also prevents states from pursuing criminal charges against federal officers for actions conducted in accordance with federal law.
Hong has recently come under fire for her anti-law enforcement rhetoric and policy proposals. Last week, CNN reported that in 2020 she wrote on X that “police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.”
She refused to back off of that stance when asked if she still supports abolishing the police.
“While I envision a world where public safety is not synonymous with law enforcement,” she told CNN. “I recognize that this paradigm shift is a very long term vision and my focus is building systems of care for now and for our future.”
Hong has led nearly every poll of Democrat voters this year, solidifying her as perhaps the candidate to beat. Voters will pick the Democratic nominee in Wisconsin’s primary election August 11th with the winner facing Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running unopposed for the GOP nomination.
