Why do we even have ICE?
And how can we get rid of it?
This would usually be a video send as Thursdays generally are, but today an ICE agent shot an unarmed citizen in the face three times and killed her, in broad daylight, as she was trying to leave the scene as they instructed her to do. I’m very, very angry, and when I’m angry I tend to yell-cry and anyway, it’s not good communication. So we’re writing today.
DHS and Trump both issued statements calling the woman a domestic terrorist (she was a legal observer sitting in her car) almost immediately; it was very quick and very obvious damage control. I have a slowed-down video on Threads of the ICE agent moving out of the way of the car and shooting the woman from a safe distance. It was not self defense. So…what do we do about ICE?
Why does ICE exist?
Before 9/11, immigration enforcement was handled by Immigration and Naturalization Services, or INS. After 9/11, the Bush administration dissolved INS and its functions were given to the newly created Department of Homeland Security. The functions of INS and a few other immigration departments were split up: border enforcement went to Customers and Border Protection, or CBP (the agency most associated right now with Greg Bovino, the short guy who looks like a shriveled apple). Immigration process was given to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and enforcement of immigration law in the interior of the country was given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement: ICE.
How does ICE work?
ICE has two main operating wings:
Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrests, detains, and deports people inside the United States.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) investigates crimes tied to cross-border activity, including trafficking, smuggling, and financial crimes.
Secure Communities was one of their larger programs, which created “an automatic immigration check any time anyone was taken into [police] custody anywhere in the country…deportations skyrocketed.” Obama replaced that program with the Priority Enforcement Program, which was similar but prioritized violent criminals. Trump reinstated Secure Communities in his first term, Biden un-instated it, and it’s not active now.
ICE’s popularity (?)
In 2018, national polling found that ICE was one of the least popular federal agencies, viewed more negatively than positively overall. Democrats viewed ICE overwhemingly negatively (82% unfavorable), while Republicans viewed it overwhelmingly positively (77% favorable). The agency has a reputation for being unnecessarily cruel, inhumane, and perhaps most importantly for this discussion, expensive. ICE now has a bigger budget than the military of most small nations, and we do not have safer neighborhoods or more efficient or humane immigration policies. As the events of today have shown, all we have to show for that money is chaos.
During Trump’s second term, opposition had grown. Support for abolishing ICE sat at 21% in November of 2024, and has risen to 37% as of the summer of 2025. After the events of today, that will almost certainly rise. As of last summer, over half of American voters viewed ICE unfavorably (56%)
There is no consensus majority demanding abolishing ICE; in reality, most of America does not want that. There is also, however, no longer a consensus majority defending ICE as it exists, which in my opinion means we simply have a branding problem. “Abolish ICE” is not popular, but changing it until it is basically abolished is. And the bigger that consensus grows, the more political will there will be to do so. America needs border enforcement. It does not need ICE.
How could we abolish ICE?
It would require an act of Congress to abolish ICE, as it took one to create it. Congress would have to repeal or amend the sections of the Homeland Security Act that establish ICE, reassign its legal authorities and functions, and redirect appropriations to whatever agencies took up those functions.
In 2018, Rep. Pramila Jayapal introduced the Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act, which proposed abolishing ICE and laying out a transition plan. That bill died in committee. Without the political power to abolish it in Congress, we do what DOGE did to the Department of Education: fire everyone and remove their budget, then transfer the legally-required functions to different cabinet agencies.
What could exist instead
Abolishing ICE does not mean abolishing immigration law or borders. There is not a realistic path to the American government no longer enforcing immigration law. But it does mean restructuring how enforcement works. According to the Yale Law Journal, this would involve:
Splitting civil immigration enforcement off from criminal investigations. Civil immigration enforcement would move to a non-policing agency focused on compliance with immigration law, not arrests. This agency would not carry out street-level raids or operate like a traditional law enforcement body. Criminal investigations involving trafficking, smuggling, and transnational crime would move to a narrower investigative agency with clear jurisdiction and no role in civil deportation. The goal is to stop civil immigration violations from being enforced through armed policing.
End mass detention as a default tool. Detention would be used only in rare cases where a person poses a genuine public-safety risk. Private detention contracts would be eliminated. Compliance would rely on community-based systems, case management, and court supervision rather than incarceration. This would mean pushing back on the for-profit prison lobby, which are some of the Republican party’s most powerful donors.
Remove local law enforcement from immigration policing. Programs that entangle local police and jails with federal immigration enforcement, including 287(g) agreements, would need to end. Local policing should not function as an extension of federal immigration enforcement, because it undermines trust and expands deportation through minor encounters. And for what it’s worth, my family members in local law enforcement at the county level do not like this part of their job.
Strengthen due process and legal access. Shifting resources toward immigration courts, legal representation, and procedural protections. Treating immigration enforcement as an administrative legal process rather than a criminal dragnet, with guaranteed access to counsel and meaningful review.
So what now?
Tim Walz is preparing the Minnesota National Guard (as of this writing at 6:30pm EST, Wednesday) and encouraging peaceful protest; if you are in Minnesota, I encourage you to attend if you are able. But here’s the medium and long-term truth: this will get worse. I know I’ve said this before (as has Heather Cox Richardson), but authoritarians double down when they start to feel weak. I would imagine we’ll see more violence from ICE, with little-to-no accountability from the DHS, and gaslighting statements that deny what we are seeing. It is imperative that you push back against that gaslighting. Do not let them capture the narrative, and always film ICE if you see them.
The fight needs to be on two things: your state and local legislative offices, including Sheriffs and state houses, which decide on whether your police departments partner with ICE. And the midterms. If we take the House back in the midterms, we can 1/ reduce the budget and headcount of ICE, which is the easiest way to reduce their operations and 2/ begin investigations. Congress’s subpoena power is held by the majority party generally.
Big props for maintaining your lucidity in the face of all this. And no explanations required for the lack of video. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first, right? The best I could do this morning was 30 minutes of rage rowing to Dropkick Murphys and not minding that it was a cardio day for a change. The fact that you can produce something cogent and constructive is a marvel, no matter what form it’s in. So thanks for that. It gives me something more to focus on than the stress induced by the mind’s override of the body’s overwhelming urge to choke the living shit out of some asshole that desperately needs it.
I’m waiting for the form letter from one or both of my senators parroting the party line victim blaming, and it occurs to me that Renee Nicole Good died doing their fucking job — conducting oversight of the executive. If they won‘t do it, then somebody else has to. And if they had any shame, we could use that point to prod them into doing something more than mumbling talking points and writing sternly worded letters.
This is a small thing, but in addition to splitting civil from criminal, we could further split immigration from customs. These smaller pieces of ICE could then be aligned to different Departments. Or in principle, DHS could even be dismantled, with individual functions returned to their pre-September 11 Departments.