Abolish ICE? It’s Complicated.
Sources
Baxter, Andrew. “A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy from the Colonial Period to the Present Day.” Cato Institute, August 3, 2021. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day.
Bolter, Muzaffar Chishti, Jessica Bolter Muzaffar Chishti and Jessica. “Once Relatively Obscure, ICE Becomes a Lightning Rod in Immigration Debate.” Migrationpolicy.Org, August 21, 2018. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/once-relatively-obscure-ice-becomes-lightning-rod-immigration-debate.
Buschschluter, Vanessa. “Ecuador Condemns ICE Agent’s Attempt to Enter Minneapolis Consulate.” BBC, January 28, 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g40k40xndo.
Chappell, Bill. “How ICE Grew to Be the Highest-Funded U.S. Law Enforcement Agency.” National. NPR, January 21, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump.
Freedom for Immigrants. “Detention Timeline.” Accessed January 28, 2026. https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-timeline.
Holmes, Kristen. “Top White House Aide Stephen Miller Acknowledges Possible Breach of Protocol before Alex Pretti’s Shooting | CNN Politics.” CNN, January 28, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/politics/stephen-miller-alex-pretti-trump.
Levinson-Waldman, Rachel. “The Abolish ICE Movement Explained.” Brennan Center for Justice, July 30, 2018. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/abolish-ice-movement-explained.
Morales, Christina. “A History of the Department of Homeland Security, the Agency Overseeing ICE.” U.S. The New York Times, January 27, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/us/dhs-ice-trump-timeline.html.
Rincon, Selena. “How a Network of Conservationists and Population Control Activists Created the Contemporary US Anti-Immigration Movement.” The Pardee Atlas Journal of Global Affairs, June 2015. https://sites.bu.edu/pardeeatlas/research-and-policy/back2school/the-anti-immigrant-movement-in-the-united-states/.
“The ‘Great Replacement’ Theory, Explained.” National Immigration Forum. https://forumtogether.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Replacement-Theory-Explainer-1122.pdf
Transcript
Hi it’s Wednesday, January 28th, 2026, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller in Minneapolis. In the wake of violent killings at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol in Minneapolis, there have been growing calls not only from Democrats but also from Republicans to Abolish ICE. But what does that mean and what would that actually look like in practice? Similar to the catchphrase “abolish the police” the idea of abolishing ICE leaves many fearing that the outcome would be increased chaos, roves of lawless criminal immigrants wandering the streets, a complete lack of law and order. So what are the practical implications of abolishing ICE, and would it really do anything? That’s what I’m examining today.
First, the latest updates on the ground here in Minneapolis. Trump got on the phone with both our Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey and all parties confirmed they were at least not hostile discussions. The media has taken that and ran with it, claiming the Trump regime has changed its tone on Minneapolis, especially considering the fact that they moved Border Patrol villain Greg Bovino out and brought Elmer Fudd lookalike contest winner and alleged bag of cash recipient Tom Homan in to replace him. Now of course Bovino plays the role of villain in his military fatigues and with his gas canister throwing better than Tom Homan who looks like Teddy from Bob’s Burgers like truly the cartoonish definition of a dope. But as someone who lives every single day in Minneapolis I can’t say sending in the border czar gives me the warm fuzzy feelings of safety and security that the mainstream media are peddling as an “easing of tensions” in Minnesota. Oh so I can stop driving around in negative 20 degree weather with my windows down because I can’t tell if what I’m hearing is regular honking or ICE honking or real whistles or phantom whistles that my mind is making up? That’s great news, Tom Homan is in town? Wow immediate nervous system release, I’m cured!!! Fight or flight?? Never heard of her!
The reality on the ground in Minneapolis is that last I checked we still have 3000 plus ICE officers and border patrol agents terrorizing the streets and attacking protesters. Literally yesterday the country of Ecuador reported ICE tried to forcibly enter its consulate here in Minneapolis. Like just because the influencers have gone back to LA and the media mobs don’t have a murder to cover doesn’t mean we’re experiencing peace and freedom in Minneapolis. Just so we’re clear. The mission is still mass deportation of anyone who’s brown or looks or sounds like an immigrant, they are not letting up, they are shifting and restrategizing but it doesn’t end here. In fact, a number of right-wing commentators are foaming at the fucking mouth for the bloodlust to continue, the “freedom caucus” in the House sent a letter to Trump urging him not to back down in Minnesota, even CNN has an on-air news anchor Scott Jennings who won’t even admit that the killing of Alex Pretti was wrong. The rot is fucking deep in this country it’s putrid and it’s not going anywhere.
One way some are calling for the rot to be rooted out is by abolishing ICE. But what does that mean, do we need ICE? Won’t that lead to freewheeling immigration with no ability to crack down? How will we enforce federal laws without them???
Turns out the proposition of doing away with ICE is more complicated than a short sound bite or click-baity news headline can manage to explain. So let’s talk about it.
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The Department of Homeland Security, home to ICE, border patrol, and numerous other sub-agencies, is a relatively new thing. And a lot of the basis of our current system for immigration enforcement was created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Congress passed the Patriot Act shortly after the 9/11 attacks, which reduced the rights of immigrants by expanding deportation powers and allowing the attorney general to detain immigrants without charge or due process. In 2002, the Homeland Security Act consolidated 22 federal departments into the new Department of Homeland Security, creating Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. Meaning that the current scheme for managing illegal immigration, including ICE, is just over 20 years old. Bush also signed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 and the Secure Fence Act of 2006 all in an effort to give the government as much power as possible to detain immigrants, often without due process or a trial. This was all in the name of fighting terrorism, as some of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks had been on US soil for a while prior to the attacks. You can see this in the militarization of ICE and CBP, you can see it in the rhetoric they use to talk about immigrants. After 9/11, the rhetoric tying immigration to terrorism and national security was ratcheted up to the point that Americans became terrified of violent thug terrorists around every corner despite falling crime rates across the board and despite numerous studies that show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americas.
So with such a relatively new agency like ICE and border patrol handling a lot of immigration in this country, it can be really easy to say well let’s just abolish ICE, it hasn’t been around that long, it’s completely out of control, let’s just get rid of it. But as I’ve researched the abolish ICE movement, I’ve found relatively few suggestions from the people pushing to abolish ICE about what happens after the agency is defunded. Because an examination of our history indicates that just defunding one agency won’t create the sea change you think it might. Like I said, the rot is fucking deep in this country.
I am plagiarizing myself a bit, I released a video back in 2023 called Why Conservatives Hate Immigrants that contained a lot of this same history, but I think it bears repeating. Because the history of immigration enforcement in this country wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy prior to the creation of ICE and so successful reforms will never include quick fixes.
For as long as immigration has existed in this country, there has been anti-immigrant sentiment. The first naturalization laws, passed by white people to allow more white people to enter and live in the land they had stolen from other people just a few years prior, those laws were actually straightforward and liberally allowed the entrance of immigrants into the country in an effort, according to Thomas Jefferson, “to produce rapid population, by as great importations of foreigners as possible.” That sentiment didn’t last long, though. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were passed in the face of looming war with France, an effort to increase residency requirements to acquire national citizenship, allowing deportation of immigrants deemed dangerous to the peace and safety of the United states or who were enemies of the nation, and limiting freedom of speech and criticism of the government. And that fear of immigrants as posing a threat to national security and our sense of nationhood has persisted. As I go through this history you’ll notice a similar trend–opening of immigration when it suits the powers that be, and mostly increased closing of borders and options depending on whomstever was deemed the scum of the earth, the shithole countries of the time.
Throughout the 1800s, developments in Europe including the Irish potato famine (or genocide, depending on who you talk to) of 1845 and political revolutions pushed numerous German and Irish Catholic immigrants to the United States, increasing the number of immigrants from 600,000 in the 1830s to 1.8 million a decade later. Nativists at the time, those in favor of limiting immigration, warned of wage competition, immigrant abuse of the welfare system, and religious clashes between the Catholic immigrants and mainly Protestant US population. That was, of course, until the Civil War created high demand for workers in the war industries. To encourage immigration, Lincoln passed the Homestead Act and the Contract Labor Act to offer land and jobs to qualified immigrants. Qualified being the key term there, giving rights only to free white people and, notably, to Africans and people of African descent. The passage of the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States. But for decades, the federal government held the position that the 14th Amendment didn’t apply to certain immigrants, such as Chinese immigrants and their descendants, many of whom built the railroads and industry that allowed the United States to flourish in the 1800s. The strength of anti-Chinese sentiment is evident not only in Congress’ interpretation of the 14th Amendment at the time but also through the passage of the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, restricting immigration of Chinese laborers, most Chinese women (who were all apparently assumed to be sex workers), and creating general blanket bans on immigrants from China. In 1889, the Supreme Court’s decision in Chae Chan Ping v. United States supported this anti-immigrant sentiment, saying that Chinese laborer “immigration was in numbers approaching the character of an Oriental invasion.”
Into the 1900s, nativists argued that immigrants impeded the American ability to achieve an “ideal” society. They committed crimes, abused the welfare system, and required that native-born Americans (white Americans, that is) be protected from the lowering immigrant classes. It was during the turn of the 20th century when eugenics and race science took hold, with many scientists, academics, and doctors believing that certain ethnicities possessed immutable characteristics that prevented assimilation into American society, cherry picking data to propose that immigrants from Northern and Western Europe were innately superior to those from Southern and Eastern Europe, ignoring the numerous Northern and Western Europeans who were criminals and depended on the welfare system. They administered so-called intelligence tests to prove the intellectual inferiority of black Americans and new immigrants, intentionally including an over representation of mentally handicapped people in their tests.
This led to the passage of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which established for the first time caps or quotas on the number of immigrants from each region, favoring Western and Northern European immigrants and giving special exemptions for family members of US citizens with the assumption that the family member exemption would be mostly used by Western and Northern Europeans. And these laws were bipartisan and widely popular because of the pervasive nativist messaging that promoted nationalism, eugenics, and xenophobia.
The US border patrol was established in the 1924 Immigration Act. Louis Beam, a prominent white nationalist, helped train KKK members to implement the Klan Border Watch to target immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border, inspiring border vigilantes to this day. Due to these new laws and the economic downturn of the Great Depression, immigration plummeted in the 1930s. And then World War II came along and really complicated our views on immigration. In the years leading up to the war, nativists in the United States had controlled the conversation enough that very few Jewish refugees were allowed into the country. After the war, when the horrors of the holocaust were discovered and the US had to face its role in turning its back on refugees, new laws were passed specifically pertaining to refugees seeking asylum in the United States. Refugee laws have of course been significantly rolled back by Trump.
In the 1950s, the Bracero Program created a simple pathway for Latin American immigrants to enter the country legally and obtain work especially in the industrial and agricultural industries that needed low wage labor during the post-war boom. The creation of a simple pathway for legal entry meant that the number of removals and apprehensions at the border plummeted by 1955. A Border Patrol official at the time warned that if the Bracero Program was ever “repealed or a restriction placed on the number of Braceros allowed to enter the United States, we can look forward to a large increase in the number of illegal alien entrants into the United States.”
And of course that very thing happened in 1964 when Congress canceled the Bracero Program in response to political pressure from labor unions who claimed their members were being undercut by cheap immigrant labor. As a result, illegal immigration surged again because Congress failed to replace the program with another guest worker visa program. Ending the Bracero Program didn’t end immigration into the United States, it simply made it illegal. Interestingly, during this time, many Republicans were actually in favor of immigration because of the cheap labor it provided for big business.
The post-civil rights movement era saw a shift away from outwardly xenophobic language to a focus on numbers and population. John Tanton, an ophthalmologist from Michigan, who was also a eugenicist, pioneered the rise of using immigration as a political tactic to lobby congress and get people to the polls. He founded a number of organizations that effectively lobbied and testified against immigration, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform or FAIR which still exists today. The organization’s website prides itself on not being a racist organization, just one that protects the US from the boogeyman immigrants. Oh and it just happens to have a eugenicist founder with ties to multiple white supremacist organizations.
And with this increased attention on Washington and lobbying Congress came a number of immigration reform bills throughout the 80s and 90s. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 gave amnesty to certain groups of illegal immigrants and penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants but did not create a way for low wage migrants from Latin America to enter and work lawfully, so even though the act boosted the number of Border Patrol agents, illegal immigration continued to increase. The Immigration Act of 1990 increased the number of green cards issued in order to attempt to attract skilled immigrant workers. Still, illegal immigration continued to climb. The Clinton administration attempted to reduce this illegal immigration via border operations such as Operation Hold the Line in 1993 and Operation Gatekeeper in 1994. Despite this, the illegal immigrant population in the US rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 5.7 million in 1995. By 1997, the number of Border Patrol agents had doubled in the last decade. This did nothing to slow illegal immigration, it simply made the process more expensive and dangerous to immigrants who were more inclined to use and pay high fees to smugglers.
And all of that was BEFORE we entered the current iteration of immigration laws in this country that were created in the wake of 9/11. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century since colonizers first set foot on US soil, those colonizers have been intent on controlling who can and cannot enter and stay here. The outwardly racist, eugenicist language has been changed to slightly more respectable claims about caring about terrorists and criminals, though especially under the Trump administration this respectability has gone away to where now we’re back to being pretty comfortable with equating IQ levels and behavior with ethnicity and race. But it is all fruit from the same poisonous tree. There have been glimpses, throughout history, of what it might look like if we divested from the criminalization of immigration by instead providing more pathways for people to enter legitimately, like aspects of the bracero program or like DACA, deferred action for childhood arrivals which granted protection for undocumented minors during the Obama administration, but they have been met with sweeping backlash from people who believe their livelihoods and way of life are threatened because of the changing demographics of the nation. They were also passed by administrations who claimed progressive ideals regarding immigration but then turned around and enforced harsh immigration policies. More people were deported under Obama than under any other previous president.
But time and again we also see that bans on immigration don’t work. People will still immigrate, they will just do so illegally instead of legally. No one PREFERS to be an illegal immigrant versus entering through legal pathways. But when you make that impossible and then also exploit the shit out of all neighboring countries and accumulate unprecedented levels of wealth and power for yourself in the process, yeah people are going to be desperate and they are going to figure out a way to immigrate to where all those resources and that wealth went. And even if border crossings do go down because people are afraid, as is happening right now, Trump’s policies absolutely have a deterrent factor for sure, the level of chaos and wasted taxpayer dollars needed to create a high enough level of fear for immigrants to make them stay away is a higher price than I think a lot of taxpaying Americans would be willing to pay if they realized the full extent of the cost of this militarized style of immigration enforcement.
When it’s in your face and leading to the deaths of people in the streets, then the nation stands up and realizes we’ve gone too far. But the costs are so much more widespread than just the explosive violence that makes the nightly news. Even just looking at the budget for ICE indicates the cost of attempting to scare the world into staying away. In 2004, ICE’s budget was $3.5 billion. By 2018 it was $7.1 billion. Today ICE’s budget is $85 BILLION making it the highest funded US law enforcement agency. Meanwhile, immigration courts are completely overwhelmed, and the backlog means that people who are attempting to enter through legal means are in a holding pattern that for a long time meant they could stay while their proceedings play out, but under the current Trump regime anyone in the country legally awaiting their immigration court proceedings have been characterized as “fugitives from the law” even though they are following every law. It does not make sense to be throwing this much money at what is essentially whack a mole but with an excessively large hammer when it has been proven time and again that providing support for immigration services, including more personnel and funding for processing immigration requests and immigration court proceedings, and more legal pathways to entry, pathways that allow people who want to work and live here to come and do so, that that is far more effective and less costly than what we’re currently doing.
But the reality is that I think honestly humans are too fucking stupid to figure that out. We are too innately fearful of the unknown, so many of us succumb to our basest instinct to fear people who look different than us, and centuries of history in the US bear that out. So while it would be really swell if Congress passed a bill defunding ICE and clawing back that 85 BILLION DOLLARS of taxpayer money that has been allocated to it, there is so much more work to be done when it comes to immigration reform.
A world without borders is I think a topic that is too large for this video but the way the world is currently set up, a world WITH borders, the reality is that every country has a vested interest in ensuring that people who want to do bad things in the country be kept out. I can accept that. Again, we’re not talking about changing the world order, getting rid of borders, getting rid of the cerceral state, criminal justice reform, etc., those are bigger discussions, I’m talking about the practicality, today, of abolishing ICE. First of all of course there’s no political will to do so, even with a few Republicans calling for it and growing calls from Democrats, Republicans control the house and the senate and the White House and the far right is salivating for more blood. A couple murders in the streets didn’t make people realize the error of their ways if anything they’ve had a smell of blood and now they want more. White nationalism is an inherently violent hateful ideology, anyone who adheres to it believes that Renee Good and Alex Pretti got what they deserved, because anyone who stands in the way or doesn’t agree with the fight to preserve white superiority is just as subhuman as the non-whites they despise. Stephen Miller isn’t up at night wringing his hands in guilt. If ICE were defunded, its enforcement mechanisms would likely just be transferred to other agencies to oversee the sprawling immigration detention facilities, arresting criminals and terrorists, etc. Defunding ICE doesn’t make sense without a comprehensive package of bills reforming our immigration system, bills that provide greater pathways for people to legally enter and work here, greater funding for the processing of those legal immigration applications and cases, along with the scaling back of the criminalization and militarization of the immigration system. I was alive when 9/11 happened, terrorism is real, the US has many enemies, there are absolutely threats that I personally am happy that there are people attempting to thwart, threats that are likely only increasing under Trump’s watch because he’s alienated us from the world and increased our list of enemies. The fact that we’ve conflated combating terrorism with the day to day management of immigration in this country creates a whole host of problems that could be avoided if we had a more humane system to handle everything except for the actual cases of terrorism, not the made up cases where Trump just calls everyone who’s brown or defends immigrants a “domestic terrorist.” And given the direction this world is taking, where fear of brown people and anti-immigrant sentiment is growing, where all our resources are being accumulated in the hands of a few billionaires while the throngs of us have to fight over scraps, so any outsider is deemed an existential threat, I don’t see the level of reform needed to TRULY create the change that I think people calling for the abolition of ICE are envisioning is possible–a humane system that sees immigrants as humans, that has the resources to promptly process immigration requests, that gives immigrants due process, that doesn’t hold them in cells, put children in cages, or brutalize all of us on the streets–I don’t see the political will for that anytime soon.
So what do we do? Well this is a question of larger global systems and trends that are bigger than you or me. It depends on major policy changes at home as well as abroad. These things don’t happen overnight. I also don’t think that calling for the abolition of ICE is the WRONG move, let me be clear, if ICE had fewer resources to put armed masked men in our streets I think we would all be better for it, it could be a short term solution to lower the temperature in this country which is currently boiling over, but I worry that other agencies within DHS would just pick up where ICE left off. I’m just saying I dream bigger than just abolishing ICE. I dream of a humane and well-functioning immigration system that, aside from the statistically miniscule number of actual criminals attempting to come in or people who want to do crimes, aside from managing them the system is focused on providing legal pathways and has the fiscal resources to process the applications quickly. A system that treats immigrants like humans. That will take a very long time to happen. Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois has been calling for defunding all of DHS, again I think that defunding would need to come with additional laws like what I’ve already spoken about. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, proving once again their inability to meet the moment with any form of resistance, have advocated for “reforming” ICE with such brilliant fucking ideas as giving them more funding for more body cams and more training. As Representative Ramirez noted, however, “The officer who shot Alex worked for DHS for 8 years. The officer who shot Renee worked for DHS for over 10 years. Both are considered ‘highly trained.’ The problem isn’t ‘training.’ DHS was built to violate our rights and has been empowered to act with impunity.” So, again, the political will just isn’t there, and won’t be there even if Democrats retake Congress in the midterms. This will take a long time, including gutting our current ineffective lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, to create any sort of true reforms.
So if this is something you’re passionate about, I encourage you to get involved in immigrants rights organizations that are pushing for policy changes, go to law school and study immigration law, donate your money to the orgs that are pushing for this type of holistic policy change. And even if this isn’t a long-term passion of yours, there is obviously immediate need, and you can give your time and money and energy to create a little pocket of resistance by living the values you wish our immigration system espoused. Whether that’s giving rides to your neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes, delivering them groceries, donating to local immigration organizations, attending anti-ICE protests, and, as always, meeting and connecting with your neighbors especially your immigrant neighbors who are living through fucking hell right now. The government controls the immigration system and has a huge impact on our lives day to day, but you are still a human with free will, use it to build a better world than the trash heap this government has handed to us.
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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from Monday about why Congress isn’t coming to save us.
