'Abolish ICE' is imperative
It's also better politics than you might think.
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DHS is two months into its occupation of Minneapolis, where ICE and Border Patrol agents are operating with shocking lawlessness and appalling brutality.
They have terrorized residents regardless of their immigration status, abducted children, and killed US citizens in broad daylight. On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good, and just 17 days later, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot repeatedly in the back while lying defenseless on the ground.
DHS goons have continued terrorizing Minnesotans this week even after the Pretti shooting. Yet many Democrats, especially in leadership, have resisted saying the words that demand to be said: “Abolish ICE.”
This moral timidity is rooted in a fear of appearing weak on illegal immigration and not sufficiently supportive of law enforcement. Centrist consultants warn Democrats about a “Defund the Police”-style backlash if they aggressively oppose ICE, but this proceeds from the flawed premise that ICE is actually law enforcement and not a paramilitary goon squad.
Formed after 9/11, ICE is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security and a contributor to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. However, ICE has demonstrated through its actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere that it poses a greater threat to public safety than the supposedly violent criminal illegal immigrants the organization is supposed to track down.
ICE agents regularly assault protesters and anyone they think is in their way. Just last week, ICE perp-walked an innocent old man, barely clothed, in subfreezing weather. ICE also abducted a 5-year-old child, used him as bait to lure his father, and then shipped the child from Minneapolis to Texas. They’ve been directed to bust into people’s homes without actual warrants.
There’s not even a legitimate reason for ICE’s dramatically expanded presence in Minnesota, which is nowhere near the southern border and — despite the administration’s shameless lies — doesn’t have a serious immigration problem. Trump sicced his droogs on Minneapolis because he’s a racist who hates Somalis, and his lawless campaign has spread to Maine, of all places, because it’s another state with a Somali population whose voters rejected him in 2024.
This is not immigration enforcement. It’s state-sanctioned terror.
During a press conference after Pretti’s killing, EMS Chief Rachel Sayre made this somber observation: “My background is in international humanitarian response in conflict zones in Yemen, Haiti, Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine. What I’ve seen here is what I’ve seen there. A powerful entity violently and intentionally terrorizing people.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi gave the game away when she offered to remove ICE if Minnesota handed over its voter rolls, which obviously has no relation to immigration enforcement.
ICE is a crude, vicious tool of state violence. “Abolish ICE” is no longer a radical position. It’s the only rational one.
ICE isn’t law enforcement
More Democrats have started to express sentiments that sound a lot like “Abolish ICE” without actually saying the words. Rep. Ro Khanna posted on social media, “[ICE] is a rogue agency. It needs to be torn down and replaced with a new federal agency that respects human and constitutional rights and has civil rights oversight.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego, a moderate who voted for the Laken Riley Act, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, "I think ICE needs to be totally torn down. People want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals, not the goon squad that has come from Stephen Miller and Donald Trump."
This is actually not that far removed from what Kamala Harris said back in 2018: “Listen, I think there is no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role and the way it is being administered and the work it is doing. And we need to probably even think about starting from scratch because there’s a lot that is wrong with the way that it is conducting itself and we need to deal with that.”
But that’s perhaps a distinction without a difference, as “starting from scratch” was enough for Trump to falsely claim in 2024 that Harris supported “Abolish ICE.” It’s not clear that euphemistic language actually helps. It’s better to just argue for what’s right, and that’s no more ICE.
Still, many Democrats insist that the slogan “Abolish ICE” is politically toxic, too closely associated with the activist left. The centrist Third Way group has argued that “Abolish ICE” might feel “emotionally satisfying” but it’s “politically lethal.” Other centrist and center-right pundits have suggested “Demilitarize ICE,” and another Democratic memo circulating encouraged Democrats to focus instead on “Reform and Retrain.”
Sen. Cory Booker seems to have run with the latter. He posted on social media earlier this month that he’s proposing new legislation that “will require ICE to adopt rigorous training hiring standards, and for their agents to wear body cameras. These are best practices used by law enforcement agencies across our country. We need to bring transparency and accountability to ICE in order to make Americans safer.”
But the problem with most “reform” measures like Booker’s is that they fail to address what’s actually happening in occupied Minneapolis.
Booker’s talk about body cams is all very 2013 considering that the Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s killings were filmed from multiple angles, and DHS, the Trump administration, and GOP leadership still defended their killers and outright lied about what is plainly visible. Pretti’s killer has not been identified — keeping the “secret” in “secret police” — but Good’s killer, Jonathan Ross, is a 10-year veteran of ICE with extensive military experience. There is no amount of training that can instill basic humanity in thugs who willingly mistreat women, children, and old men. ICE agents reportedly had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Willmar, Minnesota, before arresting some of the employees. How will “training” fix that level of moral depravity?
You can’t bring “transparency and accountability” to an organization whose agents defiantly wear masks while filming citizens and openly threatening them with political violence. A performance improvement plan isn’t going to help. The problem is the organization itself. Removing ICE is what will make Americans safer.
Besides, when even Bill Kristol is saying “Abolish ICE,” maybe skittish Democrats might consider that they’re behind the curve. It’s one thing to search for the right phrasing that will best advance the cause. But in the meantime, Democrats obviously shouldn’t help fund Trump’s personal right-wing militia.
Unfortunately, just a couple days before Alex Pretti was gunned down in the street, seven Democrats voted “yes” on the DHS appropriations bill that would continue to fund ICE without any meaningful restraints. According to a piece in the American Prospect, these Democrats are “terrified of being labeled anti–law enforcement. They want this to go away so they can talk about the cost of living more. Problem is, it’s not going away.”
Alas, authoritarian takeovers of US cities don’t just “go away” on their own, no matter how much you talk about the price of eggs. Democrats don’t have to join a local ICE protest, but they could at least show besieged Minnesotans that they’re not on their own. It’s not just morally correct. It’s also smart politics.
ICE’s terror campaign isn’t popular
When centrist groups like Third Way compare “Abolish ICE” to “Defund the Police,” they are being deliberately misleading. “Defund the Police” never enjoyed popular support. Public opinion was consistently unfavorable, and this wasn’t simply an issue of white suburbanites ignoring police violence. About 61 percent of Black Americans polled during the summer of 2020 said they wanted the police presence in their communities to remain the same and 20 percent wanted the police presence increased.
This is not a surprise. The average American has a favorable view of law enforcement. More importantly, most Americans have had positive experiences with law enforcement doing their jobs. Yes, police violence remains a serious issue, but it’s one Americans are willing to believe is mostly isolated. That’s not the case with ICE, which has swarmed into Minneapolis and treats residents like they’re living in conquered enemy territory. The result is that relatively apolitical white suburbanites have become radicalized against ICE.
Even law enforcement itself has publicly called out ICE. At a press conference last week, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley described the behavior of a criminal gang, rather than fellow law enforcement: “We’re hearing people being stopped with no cause and being demanded to show paperwork to determine if they’re here legally. We started hearing from our police officers the same complaints. Every one of these individuals is a person of color ... it has to stop.”
Cumberland County Maine Sheriff Kevin Joyce blasted ICE agents in the state for detaining one of his own corrections officers and lying about it. “We are being told one story, which is totally different than what is occurring,” he said.
Joyce described tactics that are disturbingly familiar to anyone watching the footage from Minneapolis. The ICE agents descended on the corrections recruit in an unnecessary show of force, arrested him, and left his personal belongings behind in an unsecured car on a Portland street. Joyce condemned this as “bush-league policing.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “people should be able to have an expectation that the federal government can enforce federal immigration law without these poor tactics and really unconstitutional practices.”
The public, blunt criticism of ICE’s conduct is unprecedented behavior from local law enforcement, which only reinforces how corrupt and out of control ICE is.
Recent polls show ICE continuing to hemorrhage support. According to the latest New York Times/Siena survey, 63 percent of registered voters disapprove of ICE’s performance. That includes a shocking 51 percent of white non-college voters — Trump’s key demo. A YouGov poll conducted after Pretti was killed shows “Abolish ICE” is now +5 among all adults, and +12 among independents.
ICE is on the defensive, and it’s the ideal moment for Democrats to take a stand. Chuck Schumer drew a red line on Saturday when he declared that Democrats would “not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” Even centrist Democratic Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Laura Gillen, both of whom previously voted to fund ICE, have now called for Kristi Noem’s removal as DHS head. By Sunday, six Republican senators had requested an impartial investigation into Pretti’s fatal shooting.
The pressure is mounting, but calculated, politically safe proposals for “reform” aren’t the answer. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what ICE once was or should be. We must contend with the ICE that actually exists, and in its current form, it must be abolished.
That’s it for today
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Bill Kristol saying “Abolish ICE” is the tell. When the architect of the Iraq War thinks your paramilitary force has gone too far, you’ve built something worse than law enforcement…you’ve built a goon squad.
Argentina didn’t reform the ESMA detention center. They closed it and turned it into a museum. Because you don’t reform death squads, you dismantle them.
“Reform and retrain” assumes institutions willing to enforce constraints. Minneapolis proved otherwise. Body cams filmed everything. Regime still lied, defended the killers, blamed the victims. Training doesn’t fix that. Accountability does.
Abolish ICE isn’t radical. It’s pattern recognition.
—Johan
Let’s all keep it real
ICE are not law enforcement. What they are doing is not law enforcement. It’s pure thuggery. And it’s time for the Dems to start being honest.😡