Public support for the call to “abolish ICE“is growing in the wake of the disturbing murder of Minnesota mother Renee Good and the constant flow of stories and images of equally shocking abuse by ICE agents in Minneapolis and other cities.
New vote published this week by The Economist and YouGov confirmed that support for ICE is eroding rapidly: For the first time in history, support for abolishing ICE has eclipsed opposition to the idea, by a margin of 46 percent to 43 percent, and the idea of keeping ICE in its current form is 10 points less popular than abolishing it entirely.
A private memo from the Democratic firm Blue Rose Research, first reported by The new republic, found that 76 percent had seen the footage of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting Good three times, and 86 percent had heard about the incident. Voters surveyed in that survey overwhelmingly supported measures that would require ICE agents to obtain a warrant before arrest (+29 points) and prohibit them from wearing masks (+16 points).
Outrage over ICE’s blatant abuses of power has been so widespread that Democratic lawmakers are rushing to offer voters ideas on how to rein in the agency, even as there appears to be a stark divide between public opinion and the comparatively mild steps that Democrats in Congress appear willing to take to limit ICE’s power. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) was ridiculed online after promising to introduce a bill that would include QR codes that would display the officer’s name, badge number and agency on their uniforms. Democrats Ro Khanna and Jasmine Crockett have introduced the “ICE Oversight and Reform Resolution,” which would require officers to wear body cameras and de-escalation training and ban the use of masks.
Such proposals, advocates say, would do little to curb abuses against children seen in horrifying images from Minneapolis and other American cities. In reality, they believe that stopping ICE would require stripping the agency of funds and ending its ability to arrest and detain people.
ICE was founded in 2003 as part of the reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security. But, as Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch, a coalition of groups advocating for an end to immigration detention, points out, that “creation” was actually the consolidation into a single agency of actions that were already being carried out by several others.
“For so many years, the relationship between ICE and local police was the reason deportations skyrocketed”
In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which increased penalties for immigrants who violated the law (both documented and undocumented) and made it easier to deport them. After its formation in the early 2000s, ICE typically operated by partnering with local police who helped carry out arrests, detentions, and deportations.
“For many years, especially during the Bush and Obama years, the relationship between ICE and local law enforcement was the reason deportations skyrocketed,” Shah says. “[ICE] “Having those little jail contracts, having agreements with sheriff’s departments, working with city police — that’s how people were funneled into the system.”
There was a backlash to that agreement and many communities ended those relationships, refusing to allow their local police department to partner with ICE on immigration arrests or detentions. The so-called One Big and beautiful bill Act – TriumphAmerica’s flagship budget bill, which was passed in July of last year, dramatically increased ICE’s budget, reducing its reliance on those local partners and allocating funds for the creation of a massive immigration detention apparatus that will be owned and operated by the federal government itself, one that advocates warn will be difficult to dismantle once up and running.
“From my point of view, one of the most important things that happened last year was the passage of the budget bill in July,” Shah says. For the past decade, ICE has operated on a budget of between $4 billion and $5 billion a year, but under Trump’s bill that figure will rise to more than $8 billion this year, more than $12 billion next year and nearly $16 billion in 2028, according to calculations by Barry Kogan of the Center for American Progress.
A draft application obtained by Washington Post Last year showed the federal government was working to establish “a deliberate feeding system” that will distribute immigrants to one of seven large-scale warehouses across the country. The plan would allow ICE to hold up to 80,000 immigrant detainees at a time, according to the Mail.
“As anyone who has worked against mass incarceration or American militarism can tell you: once you start building these things, it’s actually very difficult to tear them down,” Shah says. “Our job right now is to block everything we can. Yes, they got these funds, but we can still block these new detention centers. We can still do the work to prevent them from carrying out all their tasks.” Stephen Miller‘s fantasies.”
Communities where these new ICE facilities are proposed, including Social circle, Georgiaand Merrimack (New Hampshire) – they are already mobilizing to prevent them from moving forward. Doing so, Shah says, is one of the key ways civilians themselves can work to prevent further ICE growth.
“We can still do the work to stop them from acting out all of Stephen Miller’s fantasies.”
Another way to limit ICE’s power is to strip the agency of the funds it would use to carry out this dramatic expansion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been at the forefront of that push. “We’re seeing what they’re doing with this reckless explosion of funding, and I want everyone to understand that health care cuts are what’s paying for this,” he said, speaking to reporters earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) proposed a bill that would roll back ICE funding, allocating that money to tax credits designed to offset rising health care premiums. “The One Big Beautiful Bill nearly triples ICE’s budget at a time when American families across the country are facing higher premiums due to the expiration of the ACA premium tax credit,” Moulton told WGBH.
On Thursday, Michigan Rep. Shri Thanedar introduced a bill that went even further. His “Abolish the ICE Law” It proposes not only a complete rescission of ICE funding, but the abolition of the entire agency within 90 days of the bill’s passage. “We must reform ICE, but it appears that at this stage, folks, ICE is beyond reform,” Thanedar said at a press conference ahead of the legislation on Wednesday. “ICE is totally out of control.”
It’s not yet clear how many of his colleagues will be willing to join him on that bill. Their reluctance may be due to the advice of centrist think tanks such as Third Way and Searchlight Institute who have warned Democrats to avoid renewing calls to abolish the agency, saying such efforts would be “politically lethal” and urging them to instead unite around calling to “Reform and Retrain” ICE.
For now, the most encouraging sign from the Democratic Party as a whole is its growing opposition to legislation that will fund the Department of Homeland Security this year. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said members of his caucus will not support a spending bill that increases funding for ICE or lacks new accountability measures for the agency. “At this time, there is no bipartisan path forward for the Department of Homeland Security.” Jeffries told reporters Wednesday. The fate of that bill, which must be approved by the House by Jan. 30 under a deal that ended the government shutdown last year, will be the biggest indication yet of how committed Democrats are to changing ICE’s current trajectory.
