‘Abolish ICE’ creeps back into Democratic messaging

While much of the rhetoric is aimed at ICE, the Border Patrol has played a leading role in many deportation operations. Last month, immigration agents arrested a Chicago daycare worker in front of students. In another case, the targeting of an immigrant working on building a house in a residential neighborhood descended into chaos, leading to a 2-year-old child who was playing nearby being exposed to tear gas.

“Everything has changed since Chicago. The images coming from Chicago, the images coming from Charlotte,” said Joe Calvello, senior adviser to Platner. “I think people across America are deeply disturbed by this. They view this as deeply un-American.”

“That’s what Graham believes deeply: There has to be accountability,” Calvello continued. “We must expose these people who are terrorizing not only our neighbors and community members, but also American citizens. »

In contrast, Platner’s primary opponent in the Senate race, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, has not signed a bill prohibiting local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration agents.

In 2018, when the first Trump administration faced fierce opposition to separating immigrant families, an anti-ICE movement emerged that many Democrats latched onto nationally as a sort of litmus test.

However, in 2020, with a crowded presidential primary underway, some of their past statements involving defunding the police or immigration agencies came back to haunt them. That included Harris, who said at one point in 2018 that, when it comes to ICE, “we probably even have to think about starting from scratch.” Although Harris also said immigration agencies had a role to play, her opponents often portrayed her as having moved too far to the left.

Calls to eliminate ICE outright are even less common today than they were in 2018. At the same time, Democrats across the country are looking for ways, through laws and resolutions, to strip the agency of some of its core functions or impose strict accountability measures. In September, California passed the No Secret Police Act and other laws that prohibit ICE and other law enforcement from wearing masks or face coverings during enforcement and displaying visible identification. Similar efforts are underway in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

A DHS official, however, said all of this comes at a cost.

“Comparing ICE to the Nazi Gestapo, secret police, and slave patrols day after day has consequences. Our law enforcement officers are facing a more than 1,050 percent increase in assaults on them and an 8,000 percent increase in death threats. The men and women of ICE and CBP and all of our federal law enforcement agencies put their lives on the line every day to stop criminals. violent criminals and illegal aliens in order to protect and defend the lives of American citizens. Make no mistake, this type of rhetoric contributes to the surge in attacks on officers through their repeated defamation and demonization,” DHS Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

“Our law enforcement officers are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. They get up every morning to try to make our communities safer. Like everyone else, we just want to go home to our families at night. The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are just enforcing the law must stop.”

DHS has often cited elevated threats against law enforcement, but has not provided supporting data.

The 2018 anti-ICE movement expanded in part after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used it as a central tenet in her stunning victory against a well-established New York Democratic congressman.

Since Trump took office in January, she has reaffirmed that position, meddling in his administration to the point that his border czar, Tom Homan, threatened “maybe she’s going to get in trouble.”

In May, she reiterated her support for eliminating ICE and recently held “Know Your Rights” sessions in her district with immigrants facing deportation. The White House seemed so certain that this was a losing issue that it published an entire article about Ocasio-Cortez’s call for the elimination of ICE on its official webpage.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., introduced legislation that would prohibit ICE from detaining or deporting U.S. citizens. A ProPublica investigation found more than 170 cases of citizens detained by immigration officials. In an interview, Sen. Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, said he wanted to use Congress’s purse strings to demand more oversight of DHS, which Republicans have pumped in with billions of dollars in additional funding.

Today, at least some Democrats feel on much safer ground, as even the president’s allies question the administration’s tactics. Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., told NBC News that the recent off-year elections should be a “wake-up call to the GOP.” In those races, notably for the governor’s seats in New Jersey and Virginia, Republicans lost more than expected, and the Hispanic Latino voters with whom Trump made record gains in 2024 returned to Democrats.

Additionally, about a half-dozen Republicans in Congress have said the administration needs to rethink aspects of its immigration crackdown, including the radical nature of Trump’s immigration campaign, according to an NBC News review of public statements.

The administration needs “a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and kicking them out,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said in a podcast interview in October, as she broke with the administration on the issue, expressing concerns about the effects of eliminating part of the workforce.

Other high-profile condemnations of the treatment of immigrants have grown louder, from country music star Zach Bryan to Pope Leo XIV. More recently, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has long supported immigration rights, took a rare step and, for the first time in 13 years, issued a special message denouncing the administration’s actions.

It is against this backdrop that Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., has not only called for the elimination of ICE, but argued from the House floor last week that DHS should be eliminated as an agency, perhaps by moving some functions elsewhere.

“We brought DHS into this world less than 25 years ago. We can also build a world without it,” she said.

In an interview, Ramirez said that now federal agents act without constraints and do not want to be accountable to anyone but Trump.

“The tide is turning and the American people see ICE as one of the greatest threats to democracy itself,” Ramirez said. “It’s a contradiction of what this agency was created to do,” Ramirez said. “They’re terrorizing communities across the city, and you’ve seen it all across the country.”

In the race to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, leading ballot candidates Kat Abughazaleh and Daniel Biss have both called for the abolition of ICE.

Abughazaleh was not only a frequent presence at protests at an immigrant processing center that became the focal point for defeating deportation efforts; she was indicted after being accused of blocking a government vehicle from advancing.

“I would absolutely characterize ICE as the secret police, and it is absolutely imperative that we abolish ICE,” she told HuffPost.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and potential candidate for the White House in 2028, has served as a national foil to Trump on the issue of immigration, repeatedly citing examples of overreach.

In an interview, Pritzker also said that some form of Border Patrol should always exist and that in previous administrations, ICE operated within its jurisdiction.

“We need secure borders,” he said. “There is no country without a secure border. »

Pritzker, however, focused on Trump’s role in preventing ICE and CBP from going “far beyond the mission for which they were founded.”

“This president has essentially empowered them and given them immunity to go after people who have committed what is, by law, a crime,” Pritzker said. “He basically treats these people like they’re the worst of the worst, and they choose to be cruel and dehumanize people.”