Enforced by?
It feels very strange in 2026 to act like the next admin is just going to tweak things back. 2029 can’t be 2021. As bad as everything after Covid was Dems will adopt a nation in much much more dire straits (no pun intended) than Biden or Obama did on day 1. We’re not even two years into the reign of a mad king and have a dozen economic and ecological disasters brewing.
If anything “abolish ice” is too unambitious in its vision because by the time we have the power to enact it, it may feel almost simplistic, like much of the sloganeering and Mueller obsessed “resistance” of the pre-covid Trump era.
As stated:
Here is where I suspect you lose many, including many Democrats. Majorities condemn how ICE is doing the job but would not agree that the agency was created with the goal of terrorizing people as its purpose. It instead has been hijacked by a.hateful administration and what had been a moderately effective agency doing a necessary function professionally has been used malignantly. ICE prior to Trump was not evil; its function was not evil. Vast majorities of voters agree there is real need for that pre-Trump function served by a professionally run agency.
The abuses by ICE can stopped on a virtual dime. They occur by virtue of Trump edicts and directives by his administration to explicitly ignore vast amounts of past policies and procedures in pursuit of goals far outside the necessary purpose of the agency.
True story:
Our bathroom has a ceiling light/fan fixture that worked, but inadequately: every time we used it, it made us a little sad. So a couple of weeks ago, we got rid of it.
Questions:
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Given that we got rid of the light/fan fixture, what do you imagine happens now when we flip the light switch?
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Assuming you’re imagining “nothing happens, it stays dark, because you got rid of the light fixture,” do you think that was a wise choice?
Lemme retell the story with a couple clarifications.
Our bathroom has a ceiling light/fan fixture that worked, but inadequately: every time we used it, it made us a little sad. So a couple of weeks ago, we replaced it with a new and better unit.
Questions:
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Given that we replaced it, what do you think happens when we flip the switch?
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Do you think we made a wise choice?
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Importantly, what do you think happened to the old fixture we replaced?
In my mind, “replace” contains and elaborates on the word “abolish.” It tells that we didn’t just get rid of something problematic, but we thought ahead to figure out how to solve the problem that the problematic thing was supposed to solve.
If we say “abolish,” Republicans can easily segue into acting like we’re calling for open borders and other such. If we say “replace,” the conversation becomes, replace with what? And that’s a much better conversation to be in.
Take the person who had six law enforcement jobs in two years. Think about what kind of police or corrections department gave them the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth job in two years.
Somebody here may say they should be arrested rather than hired by red-state police. But in the great majority of cases there will be no proof of a criminal offense.
You can’t get out of authoritarianism without paying some price.
If you say “Replace a light fixture”, you mean “put in something that does the same job as the light fixture, but better”. If you say “replace ICE”, you mean “put in something that does the same job as ICE, but better”. But the job that ICE does is terrorizing the populace. So “replace ICE” means “get something that’s even better at terrorizing the populace”. That’s not what we want.
We will, of course, want some department for enforcing immigration laws. But that department, once we create it, won’t be a replacement for ICE, because that’s not ICE’s job.
I still cannot find the final DNC abolish ICE resolution text. But I did find a bill introduced in congress in January:
This bill abolishes ICE without replacing any functions. It is too extreme for me. Hopefully the DNC resolution was a bit different.
The intended job of ICE includes drug and human trafficking enforcement and actions against violent criminals here illegally. It worked modestly well at those functions before Trump.
As a fan and light fixture it was fine with some thinking it could be a bit brighter and move more air.
Trump attached razor blades on strings to the fan blades and strobe lights.
If all that happened was immediate restatement of the limits of ICE to the narrower enforcement of the priority categories that was the policy under Biden (true national security risks, aggravated felonies …) and a return to “sensitive location” protections that had been in place, then ICE could continue to to do the function that most believe is required of it.
The problem is not the agency existing; the problem is the marching orders it was given under Trump. And the support those illegal actions got from the current SCOTUS.
I, and many other Americans, believe that enforcement against drug and human trafficking is a necessary function. That enforcement against actual national security risks and felons is desirable. I don’t see those things as akin to being Gestapo or being a terrorist organization.
If a platform proposes to eliminate the agency that does those things without having another means to do them already in place and fully functioning and a proposed means of making that happen then it is beyond reckless in my mind.
That agency can be abolished and those job functions picked up by some new agency. ICE didn’t exist before 2003, and yet somehow those functions were done.
I don’t think that drugs and human trafficking violations are enforced by ICE – I would have thought the DEA and the FBI handled those cases. Or, CBP, for drugs and trafficking crossing the border.
If ICE was ever a functional organization, hiring thousands of unqualified, racist thugs has destroyed it beyond repair. Shut it down, create a new organization, and move forward.
“Reform ICE to replace them with well-trained, well-meaning public servants” just doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.
Those things are not ICE’s job. They were originally supposed to be ICE’s job, but nobody knows that, because while ICE was focused on those things, nobody ever heard about them. The only job American voters have ever known for ICE is terrorism. So we need to completely abolish it.
On a separate note, we also need to establish a force to deport dangerous criminals and prevent trafficking. But that’s a separate note. We have to abolish ICE regardless of what we do about the anti-trafficking force, and we need to create an anti-trafficking force regardless of what we do with ICE.
Your position of “Don’t say abolish ICE, say replace ICE” is at best equivalent to a position of “Don’t say abolish ICE, say increase the minimum wage”: The changes you’re proposing are completely independent of abolishing ICE. But that’s at best, because a lot of voters won’t interpret “replace ICE” as an irrelevancy; they’ll instead interpret it as approval for ICE’s job and a desire to double down on it.
Inside ICE is the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) sub-org. They investigate trafficking, etc. and are the second largest Federal investigation department (after the FBI).
Prior to 2025, HSI was 2/3rds of ICE. Now it is about 1/2.
OK, well, anyway, move that over to the FBI and DEA, since they are probably still mostly professionals.
As mentioned before, HSI, the branch that handles trafficking, CSAM, foreign cybercrime, money laundering etc. could be spun off on its own with ease. Or attached to other entities. A lot of it used to be over at Treasury with Customs and Secret Service before the creation of Homeland Sec.
And someone else also mentioned: order the Street Thug branch to uncover their faces and identify by name and a whole lot of them will “self-layoff.”
I’m not sure what makes sense since there’s an authoritarian streak through all of the federal enforcement agencies. Who would be infecting who?
I think it depends on which departments you can stabilize vertically :
- DOJ (FBI and DEA)
- DHS (ICE, CBP, Secret Service)
Keeping the ICE functions in DHS isolates them in DHS and might be easier to fix with a new head of DHS. Although fixing the DOJ is probably more important.
And yet ICE is a lynchpin of that enforcement. … or was. Resources that were used for those functions were redeployed under Trump.
Staff diversions are especially dangerous at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) – one of the primary agencies responsible for combatting child exploitation, human trafficking, fentanyl smuggling, and cartels. HSI personnel themselves have warned that these reassignments are dismantling one of the country’s most effective child protection and national security forces.
HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, is ICE’s criminal investigative arm, and investigates transnational crime: drug and human trafficking, child exploitation, cybercrime, financial crimes, weapons and export violations, and similar cross-border criminal activity.
Trumpian ICE is making our country more dangerous, not safer. The pre Trump ICE however was doing damn important stuff.
Like it or not, ICE has become a symbol of terror and fascism. You don’t reform symbols of terror and fascism, you get rid of them. And no Democrat has a chance of getting through the primary without campaigning on this, regardless of anyone’s fears about “moderate” and independent voters.
Maybe there’s nuance about “replace” or “shift duties” or whatever, but ICE must be dismantled.
So, move HSI under the FBI, if there’s anything there that can be saved. The FBI is good at investigations, or used to be, so HSI could doubtless gain knowledge from being in that world.
ICE is irretrievably broken.
ETA: Here’s the thing – no one knows that ICE used to do. I’m a pretty plugged in person, and I had no idea they had those divisions. So, moving those divisions into existing organizations would work just fine. Abolish the street presence ICE people and develop a new force that go after people who are here illegally and have criminal records. Don’t let those people attack schools and immigration courts, don’t set a quota of 2000-4000 arrests per day, and definitely don’t kidnap people off the street using masked thugs. And, call them something else.
I am not so convinced it would be easy. And all that is wrong with it is that resources have been redirected away from it.
The abuses are within ERO. And ERO without Trump’s perverse directives, massive cannibalizing from other necessary functions, and supplementation with whatever abusive thugs were possible to hire, was working fairly well before, doing its own function that is widely believed to be necessary.
“Reform the ERO division of ICE!” is quite the rallying cry.
Maybe not a lot, but I think plenty to continue to cause chaos. They are already causing mass protests and are supposedly acting legally. Now take their paychecks away. They might lose some of there gear, or not.
They where born angry and indoctrinated on racism and bigotry. We’re gonna have a whole nother division of the proud boys etc.