“Can’t understand how they think”: Bundy breaks with MAGA over ICE operations
Ammon Bundy can’t see himself in the right’s praise of ongoing ICE enforcement actions.
The rancher and militia member became a right-wing icon after he participated in two armed standoffs with the federal government. In a recently published interview with The Atlantic, Bundy called the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti “sickening” and admitted that “when it comes to the more humanitarian side… I think the left has it much more correct than the nationalist right.”
Bundy’s no stranger to MAGA opposition. His views don’t slot fully into the Republican Party or the movement around Donald Trump. Last year, Bundy published an essay opposing the administration’s stance on immigrantion, making a biblical case for protecting all people who come to the United States.
“The right to move, to seek peace, and to provide for one’s family is not a privilege granted by people in governments,” he wrote. “It is part of the created order and a national right of mankind.”
Bundy called the persecution of immigrants a “moral failure.”
“To call such people criminals for lacking official permission… is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice,” he wrote.
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Speaking to other militia members who joined the revolts of Bundy and his father, The Atlantic found that Ammon was an outlier in his own community. When he was presented with his compatriots support for ICE, he was baffled.
“I can’t understand how they think,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to me… It’s scary, actually.”
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