Say What You Mean: Reform and Retrain ICE, Don’t Abolish It

Renee Good’s death at the hands of an ICE agent is an unspeakable and entirely avoidable  tragedy. The video evidence shows that the ICE agent was out of the path of the slowly moving vehicle when he fired on Ms. Good, in apparent contravention of law enforcement guidelines that say lethal force should only be used when an agent’s life is in danger. The Trump Administration could have done the responsible thing by offering condolences to Ms. Good’s family and committing to a non-partisan investigation of what happened, including taking punitive actions against the agent involved if they were found culpable. Instead, they are channeling Orwell by telling the American people to ignore the evidence of their eyes and ears, even as they exclude state law enforcement from the FBI’s review of the incident.

This is not an incident that happened in isolation. The Trump Administration has been deploying ICE agents, often in conjunction with law enforcement personnel from other agencies like the FBI, DEA, and CBP, to cities all over the country in a concerted effort to instill fear in immigrant communities. American citizens have been collateral damage in this campaign. DHS personnel have fired their weapons at least 16 times this year during immigration enforcement actions, and ICE has erroneously detained at least 170 United States citizens. This comes even as DHS has significantly relaxed training and vetting requirements for new hires at ICE in its sprint to double the size of the agency, reducing the time they spend learning the law and how to apply it safely at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center from six months to six weeks, and placed unqualified political operatives in key positions that have historically been designated for career law enforcement officials.

Confronted by these excesses, some on the left have renewed their calls to “abolish ICE.”  But let’s be clear that 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. Instead, Democrats should embrace an aggressive plan to rebuild ICE based on two concepts: Reform and Retrain. 

Background

There is no question that ICE has one of the most difficult jobs in government, in no small part because of how dysfunctional and broken our overall immigration system has become. Congress has spent the past 30 years failing to address these issues or adequately fund key parts of our immigration system, such as the immigration courts. As a result, Immigration Court cases often take more than 4 years to conclude, meaning that by the time a person who entered illegally is ordered removed, they often have U.S. citizen family members and have become contributing members of their communities.

It is an open secret in our immigration system that people who lose their cases—in other words, those whom courts have ordered to be deported—are unlikely to be removed because removing people from the interior of the United States years after they entered unlawfully is extraordinarily challenging. It involves finding people who often don’t want to be found, and pulling people who don’t want to leave out of the communities they have developed deep ties to. This dysfunctional system creates a severely cruel dynamic: it allows people to stay long enough to put down roots while their cases inch slowly through the legal system, but if they lose their cases, law enforcement officers are forced either to tear them away from their communities or turn a blind eye and let migrants stay (in contravention of the officers’ sworn duty to uphold the law). As a result, ICE has historically focused on removing people who commit crimes, since it is much easier to take them into custody directly from state and local detention facilities.

In confronting this broken system, the Trump Administration sidestepped Congress and instead weaponized immigration enforcement, pushing ICE and CBP to take actions that are at odds with the rule of law—including refusing to identify themselves or their agencies in public and wearing masks, lying to judges about use of force, and routinely violating court orders.

In doing so, they are setting a trap for Democrats. Responding to this kind of lawlessness by saying you want to “Abolish ICE” is exchanging one kind of lawlessness for another. It means that you support getting rid of the agency responsible for enforcing immigration and customs laws, creating a lawless system where people who enter the country illegally can stay here indefinitely, leaving no agency charged with finding and removing them. This will, inevitably, incentivize others to come to the United States illegally. “Abolish ICE” is not some proxy for more humane immigration enforcement, or to change ICE’s culture to adhere to due process, or to impose accountability on rogue officers. It’s advocating for an extreme.

Unless you truly believe that the United States should not have an agency that enforces immigration and customs laws within our borders, and you want to increase illegal immigration, you should not say you want to abolish ICE.

Americans want and deserve enforcement, not cruelty. Most Americans believe that we need to enforce our immigration laws in the interior of the United States, but they want that enforcement to be professional, humane, and effective. Despite Trump’s overall slide in popularity, public support for his immigration policies has been much more durable than support for other key sectors (such as his economic and trade policies), and polls continue to show that voters trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle immigration policy. Even now, “Abolishing ICE” remains an unpopular proposition for most Americans.

ICE needs to be reformed, modernized, and professionalized. Many of the specific measures people often lump under the slogan “Abolish ICE” are both good policy and quite popular, such as banning the use of masks, ending performative immigration raids, and requiring strict adherence to due process rights. Figuring out how to enforce our laws in a way that builds trust with our communities is not a new proposition—in fact, Sir Robert Peel laid out the core principles of modern policing almost two centuries ago. Chief among them were the ideas that the police need to garner the trust of the public and minimize the use of force in order to be effective. We need concrete reforms to ensure that ICE adheres to these core principles—not to get rid of it.

Learning from “Defund:” When it Comes to ICE, Say What You Mean

George Floyd’s callous murder at the hands of Derek Chauvin in 2020 led many who were rightly outraged to turn to the rallying cry of “defund the police.” The slogan grabbed attention, but in many cases misrepresented what was meant by those who used it. While some advocates insisted that they literally wanted to defund the police, others had to explain that what they really wanted was some combination of reform and reallocation of funds. At the time, there was strong public support for a range of aggressive police reform measures, and there was a window of opportunity to enact them. Defunding the police—that is, starving police departments of resources—was one of the only reforms that did not enjoy public support.

Unfortunately, the furor over “defund” diverted attention from other reforms, while also prompting a backlash that aided Trump by allowing him to seize the ‘pro-law enforcement’ mantle. Ultimately, the slogan sucked all the oxygen out of efforts at reform. Six years later, there has been no major police reform at the federal level, many law enforcement officers feel like Democrats are hostile toward them, and polls consistently show the public trusts Republicans more than Democrats to reduce crime.

We run the risk of seeing that same dynamic unfold now in response to the horrific murder of Renee Good. Some Democrats are taking up the cry to abolish ICE, even though in many cases what they mean is something different. At this critical moment, leaders should say what they mean. 

The Plan: Reform and Retrain

Democrats have to offer a proactive vision that shows they are serious about enforcing our immigration laws and directly addresses the cruelty and lawlessness of the Trump Administration’s policies.

We have already lived through this movie: the chaos caused by ICE’s tactics in our cities today is in part the result of voters losing trust in Democrats’ ability to secure the border during the Biden Administration. Democrats are right to call Trump’s racist and vindictive approach to immigration for what it is, but they should be specific and direct about what their approach to interior immigration law enforcement would be.

Public trust is the bedrock for law enforcement, and ICE will have a steep road ahead of itself to rebuild the confidence it has lost with many American communities. But we will always need a federal agency charged with deporting people who are in the United States illegally. We can have a debate about whether we need to replace ICE with a new agency that has this mission, or provide meaningful reforms that rebuild the public’s fractured trust in ICE’s ability to discharge its mandate safely and effectively—but we should not fall for the trap Trump has set by advocating for wholesale abolition.

An aggressive plan can be summed up in two words: Reform and Retrain.

Reform. Reform ICE root and branch, including:

• We are a nation of laws. We need to enforce our interior immigration laws in a way that adheres to the constitutional right to due process.
• No masks. If you are enforcing lawful orders, there is no justification for hiding your name, your face, or your agency affiliation.
• No one is above the law. There must be stiff consequences, including dismissal and prison time, for officers who break the law.
• No indiscriminate enforcement. ICE needs to focus its limited resources on criminals and people who pose a threat to our communities, not landscapers and nurses.
• Outside oversight. We need a bipartisan group of law enforcement professionals to be charged with overseeing and reviewing ICE use of force policies, training, and incidents. And we need to provide justice and compensation for victims identified by this bipartisan group.

Retrain. ICE needs to become a modern, accountable, and professional law enforcement organization, including:

• Use of Force Policies. ICE officers need to undergo rigorous—and recurring—training that adheres to law enforcement best practices on how and when to use force.
• Community policing practices. ICE should be trained on, and adhere to, the best practices identified by state and local police forces when interacting with the public.
• Identify and weed out the bad apples. Rescind Trump Administration policies that have significantly relaxed vetting and standards for new employees, and ensure that all personnel undergo recurring vetting to ensure they meet the highest standards for professionalism.
• Rightsize ICE. Refocus the agency on its core mission and ensure that remaining One Big Beautiful Bill Act funding is spent on core law enforcement functions, not immigration theater.