WASHINGTON — “Abolish ICE.”
Democratic lawmakers and candidates for office around the country increasingly are returning to the phrase, popularized during the first Trump administration, as they react to this administration’s forceful immigration enforcement tactics.
The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent this month in Minneapolis sparked immediate outrage among Democratic officials, who proposed a variety of oversight demands — including abolishing the agency — to rein in tactics they view as hostile and sometimes illegal.
Resurrecting the slogan is perhaps the riskiest approach. Republicans pounced on the opportunity to paint Democrats, especially those in vulnerable seats, as extremists.
An anti-ICE activist in an inflatable costume stands next to a person with a sign during a protest near Legacy Emanuel Hospital on Jan. 10 in Portland, Ore. The demonstration follows the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis as well as the shooting of two individuals in Portland on Jan. 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
(Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images)
“If their response is to dust off ‘defund ICE,’ we’re happy to take that fight any day of the week,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The group has published dozens of press statements in recent weeks accusing Democrats of wanting to abolish ICE — even those who haven’t made direct statements using the phrase.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) amplified that message Wednesday, writing on social media that “When Democrats say they want to abolish or defund ICE, what they are really saying is they want to go back to the open borders policies of the Biden administration. The American people soundly rejected that idea in the 2024 election.”
The next day, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the “Abolish ICE Act,” stating that Good’s killing “proved that ICE is out of control and beyond reform.” The bill would rescind the agency’s “unobligated” funding and redirect other assets to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Many Democrats calling for an outright elimination of ICE come from the party’s progressive wing. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a television interview the agency should be abolished because actions taken by its agents are “racist” and “rogue.” Jack Schlossberg, who is running for a House seat in New York, said that “if Trump’s ICE is shooting and kidnapping people, then abolish it.”
Other prominent progressives have stopped short of saying the agency should be dismantled.
A pair of protesters set up signs memorializing people who have been arrested by ICE, or have died in the process, at a rally in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Sen. Alex Padilla, (D-Calif.) who last year was forcefully handcuffed and removed from a news conference hosted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, joined a protest in Washington to demand justice for Good, saying “It’s time to get ICE and CBP out,” referring to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“This is a moment where all of us have to be forceful to ensure that we are pushing back on what is an agency right now that is out of control,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on social media. “We have to be loud and clear that ICE is not welcome in our communities.”
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) said Democrats seeking to abolish ICE “want to go back to the open borders policies of the Biden administration.”
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
Others have eyed negotiations over the yearly Homeland Security budget as a leverage point to incorporate their demands, such as requiring federal agents to remove their masks and to turn on their body-worn cameras when on duty, as well as calling for agents who commit crimes on the job to be prosecuted. Seventy House Democrats, including at least 13 from California, backed a measure to impeach Noem.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Diego), who serves on the House Committee on Appropriations, said his focus is not on eliminating the agency, which he believes has an “important responsibility” but has been led astray by Noem.
He said Noem should be held to account for her actions through congressional oversight hearings, not impeachment — at least not while Republicans would be in control of the proceedings, since he believes House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) would make a “mockery” of them.
“I am going to use the appropriations process,” Levin said, adding that he would “continue to focus on the guardrails, regardless of the rhetoric.”
Chuck Rocha, a Democratic political strategist, said Republicans seized on the abolitionist rhetoric as a scare tactic to distract from the rising cost of living, which remains another top voter concern.
“They hope to distract [voters] by saying, ‘Sure, we’re going to get better on the economy — but these Democrats are still crazy,’” he said.
Dozens of Angelenos and D.C.-area organizers, along with local activists, rally in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. Democrats have for years struggled to put forward a unified vision on immigration — one of the top issues that won President Trump a return to the White House.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Democrats have for years struggled to put forward a unified vision on immigration — one of the top issues that won President Trump a return to the White House. Any deal to increase guardrails on Homeland Security faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Congress, leaving many proposals years away from the possibility of fruition. Even if Democrats manage to block the yearly funding bill, the agency still has tens of billions of dollars from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Still, the roving raids, violent clashes with protesters and detentions and deaths of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike increased the urgency many lawmakers feel to do something.
Two centrist groups released memos last week written by former Homeland Security officials under the Biden administration urging Democrats to avoid the polarizing language and instead channel their outrage into specific reforms.
“Every call to abolish ICE risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of immigration enforcement — while handing Republicans exactly the fight they want,” wrote the authors of one memo, from the Washington-based think tank Third Way.
“Advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States — a policy position that is both wrong on the merits and at odds with the American public on the issue,” wrote Blas Nuñez-Neto, a senior policy fellow at the new think tank the Searchlight Institute who previously was assistant Homeland Security secretary.
Roughly 46% of Americans said they support the idea of abolishing ICE, while 43% are opposed, according to a YouGov/Economist poll released last week.
Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who co-wrote the Third Way memo, said future polls might show less support for abolishing the agency, particularly if the question is framed as a choice among options including reforms such as banning agents from wearing masks or requiring use of body cameras.
“There’s no doubt there will be further tragedies and with each, the effort to take an extreme position like abolishing ICE increases,” she said.
Laura Hernandez, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, a California-based organization that advocates for the closure of detention centers, said the increase in lawmakers calling to abolish ICE is long overdue.
“We need lawmakers to use their power to stop militarized raids, to close detention centers and we need them to shut down ICE and CBP,” she said. “This violence that people are seeing on television is not new, it’s literally built into the DNA of DHS.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the “Abolish ICE Act.”
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
Cinthya Martinez, a UC Santa Cruz professor who has studied the movement to abolish ICE, noted that it stems from the movement to abolish prisons. The abolition part, she said, is watered down by mainstream politicians even as some liken immigration agents to modern-day slave patrols.
Martinez said the goal is about more than simply getting rid of one agency or redirecting its duties to another. She pointed out that alongside ICE agents have been Border Patrol, FBI and ATF agents.
“A lot of folks forget that prison abolition is to completely abolish carceral systems. It comes from a Black tradition that says prison is a continuation of slavery,” she said.
But Peter Markowitz, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Cardozo School of Law, said the movement to abolish ICE around 2018 among mainstream politicians was always about having effective and humane immigration enforcement, not about having none.
“But it fizzled because it didn’t have an answer to the policy question that follows: If not ICE, then what?” he said. “I hope we’re in a different position today.”
