Abolishing ICE might be one of the most progressive – and attention-grabbing – talking points that's made it
onto the platforms of several midterm election candidates in 2018.
We should protect families that need our help, and that is not what ICE is doing today.
And that’s why I believe you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works.
We need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom, starting by replacing ICE
with something that reflects our morality.
And we can replace it with a humane agency that is directed toward safe passage.
But is it a realistic demand? Can ICE be abolished? And what does “abolishing” ICE even mean?
Do we really want to live in a country where there's this massive force, this mass police force,
that surveils us every single day and whose job is solely to hunt immigrants and expel them from this country?
Hey guys, I’m Sana, and this Sunday we’re talking about why there’s a call to abolish a government agency –
and what that means for the future of people in this country, documented and undocumented.
In the spring of 2018, news spread about children being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border
as a part of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy for non-authorized crossing.
"The United States cannot have an open border to every illegal alien family and minor on the face of the earth."
And it was ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, that came under particular scrutiny.
ICE detention facilities have been detaining children who were separated from their families by Customs and Border Patrol under Trump administration orders.
With horrifying stories of family separation becoming widespread, the call to “abolish ICE” likewise became widespread.
Now, it might feel like the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been around for a long time,
but the truth is, you’re probably older than the agency itself.
After the September 11th attacks and the declaration of a global “War on Terror,” the
George W. Bush administration went into full reorganization of governmental agencies and practices.
The priority became so-called “counter-terrorism.”
A major part of that reorganization – and a major part of the history of ICE – was the introduction of the Department of Homeland Security.
The DHS was tasked with doing whatever it needed to do to keep the country safe –
and part of keeping the United States safe was securing its borders.
Prior to 2003, immigration in the United States was handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
agency, or INS, which was first under the Department of Labor and then the Department of Justice.
But it was absorbed into the DHS, and doing so made immigration a matter of national security, to counter terrorism.
And once it was absorbed by DHS, the INS was split into three agencies.
One was Customs and Border Protection, another was Citizenship and Immigration Services,
and finally Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE.
It’s worth noting that the reason why immigration was made such a big part of the Department of Homeland
Security is because the administration relied on immigration laws to respond immediately
to the 9/11 attacks – which were carried out by visitors on short-term visas.
Greisa Martinez, deputy executive director of United We Dream, adds a bit more
about the roots of the agencies that were created after the attacks.
They were created out of fear, irrational fear. It was based on Islamophobia and xenophobia,
which really means people didn't like Muslims at that time, and they thought that this was something that they needed to protect themselves.
And while ICE has a few different functions, its most controversial function has been the arresting, detaining and deporting of undocumented immigrants.
I also want to point out that ICE wasn’t just big under the Bush administration – it expanded a lot under the Barack Obama administration.
Over the course of 13 years its budget increased from $3.3 billion to $6.1 billion,
and the number of agents it employed tripled.
Today, ICE’s primary duties – arresting, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants –
have caught the attention of a lot of Americans, and that’s the springboard for calls to abolish ICE.
But it’s worth noting that ICE didn’t start detaining families or kids or parents in the spring of 2018.
The agency has been conducting raids, arrests and detentions since it was first established.
And for most of its existence, it’s been accused of inhumane, unjust and unethical treatment of people.
According to the ACLU, ICE tactics “take away even the right to a fair hearing in court”
and “implicate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures,
the constitutional guarantee of due process and the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and freedom
from discrimination based on race, ethnicity and national origin.”
A 2018 report put together by several human-rights groups found that more than half of ICE
custody deaths in recent years could have been prevented with adequate medical care and attention.
And the tactics that ICE is renowned for include arresting undocumented parents after they’ve dropped
their kids off at school, mass raids, picking up anyone, anywhere – including in sanctuaries like churches –
as well as separating families and keeping people, including kids, in cages.
Martinez, herself, remembers what it was like growing up with the looming fear of ICE that permeated through her neighborhood.
I grew up in an undocumented home. I was one of four daughters, with two undocumented parents,
and I've grown up with ICE in my life. It's kind of like the boogeyman of the immigrant community.
When people talk about ICE and these agents, you imagine, like, men in like these green-and-blue uniforms
coming to your home in the middle of the day that will separate you from your family.
This is something that is embedded in the culture of immigrants in this country.
Dennis Rivera is a 19-year-old undocumented Houston resident originally from Honduras, and was detained by ICE for two months.
Dennis had gotten into an incident with another student at school, and when he went to go report it, the school
officer ended up sending him to a local jail, where he was put in immigration custody.
So what does it mean to abolish ICE? According to Martinez, it means first and foremost defunding ICE.
"What we're actually asking for right now and what we need is for these agencies that get billions of dollars
of our tax money to be defunded, for us to take the money away. The money that allows them to
have these cages, the money that allows them to have these detention camps,
and the money that allows them to deport people.
It’s critical to point out that because the call to abolish ICE has been adopted by so many
different people and interest groups, specifically on the wide-ranging left,
there’s not really agreement on what “abolishing ICE” really means.
For some, it’s about restructuring the three immigration agencies under DHS.
For others, it’s stopping deportations, closing detention centers, defunding ICE and Border Patrol,
and giving asylum to the undocumented. And for others, it’s going back to the way things were before 2001.
But in an interview with AJ+, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told us that the problem isn’t just with the agencies,
but also with the underlying ideology that criminalizes immigrants and immigration from the get-go.
When we talk about replacing it with a system, we need to talk about really having a system that is safe,
that documents people effectively, that is also not rooted in the discrimination system that our
immigration system was initially built on. The first immigration law in the United States was the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The first law about immigration in the United States was, “How do we exclude a specific type of people?”
And putting immigration under a department dedicated to countering terrorism doesn't match up to, well, the facts.
A 2015 study found that immigrants were way less likely to commit crimes than those born here.
The study emphasized that this also held true for young, undocumented Salvadoran, Mexican and Guatemalan men.
Another study, a 2017 one by the Cato Institute, found that undocumented immigrants were 44%
less likely to be incarcerated than those born here, and legal immigrants were 69% less likely.
So there are two parts to abolishing ICE: There’s the policy part, which may involve getting rid of
the agency or reforming it, and that’ll be tough to implement without congressional support.
Then there’s the part to abolishing ICE that’s undoing over a century of institutionalized
criminalization of immigrants, especially those crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
And for Dennis, who just enrolled for classes at University of Houston
while his immigration case is ongoing, there’s no question about ICE’s future.