ICE: To Abolish or Not, That Is the Question

I don’t support a slogan, and I don’t support abusive, unaccountable enforcement tactics either. I support a secure border, an immigration enforcement system that follows the law and answers to the public, and a realistic, honest plan for the millions of undocumented people already living in this country. That plan is not open borders, and it is not mass deportation. It’s permanent legal residency, without a path to citizenship.

Most people don’t realize immigration enforcement predates ICE. Before 2003, these functions sat inside the INS. ICE, CBP, and USCIS were only split out after 9/11 as part of the DHS reorganization. Most serious “abolish ICE” proposals don’t call for ending enforcement, including enforcement against visa overstays. They call for reorganizing how enforcement is carried out and by whom. Others go further, arguing for a compliance-based model over detention and mass removal. And a growing number of voices on the center-left explicitly reject the “abolish” framing altogether, while still demanding an end to masked, unidentified agents, excessive force, and a lack of transparency.

I don’t think the label matters nearly as much as the substance. Whatever we call the agency, it needs clear rules of engagement, identifiable officers, use-of-force accountability, and real oversight. That’s not a radical position. It’s a baseline for any law enforcement agency operating in American communities.

The Heart of the Issue: Mass Deportation of the Undocumented

Once you set aside the debate over ICE’s name and org chart, the actual policy question is what to do about the roughly 10–15 million undocumented immigrants already living in this country, most of whom crossed the border years ago. Physically locating, detaining, and removing millions of people is not a realistic plan. It seems that the goal of ICE thuggery is to terrify the undocumented into self-deporting. It hasn’t worked, and instead resulted in a backlash, even among people who initially supported a tougher approach in theory.

With illegal crossings down substantially from their recent peak, I believe it’s time to pair a secure border with an honest resolution for people already here: permanent legal residency, with no path to citizenship. This is not amnesty. It does not grant voting rights or a route to naturalization. It does mean people who have been contributing to their communities can stop living in fear, stop being exploited by employers who use their status against them, and be accounted for instead of remaining in the shadows. Ending that exploitation also helps raise wages and working conditions for everyone, including American-born workers.

I recognize this satisfies neither the far left nor the far right entirely, and I expect to be pressed from both directions. To advocates who want a citizenship path, I’d say: legal status without fear of removal is a substantial, meaningful improvement over the status quo, and I believe the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants will be grateful and satisfied with it. To those who want mass removal, I’d ask: what is your actual, physically achievable alternative? Do you want President Trump to start executing undocumented immigrants in order to terrify the rest of them into self-deporting? Even that probably won’t work, but it will for sure trigger a global backlash against us.

Separately, I believe our overall legal immigration quotas are too low, and I support increasing them. But that must happen through legislation, debated openly in Congress, with the American people persuaded on the merits, not through executive workarounds. Sidestepping that debate is part of what has fueled a broader backlash against legal immigration itself, and I don’t think that serves anyone.

None of this requires tolerating abusive tactics. Masked agents who won’t identify themselves, unmarked vehicles, and unaccountable uses of force erode public trust and make communities less safe, not more. Enforcement of the law and respect for basic constitutional norms are not in conflict. I will support clear identification requirements, use-of-force standards, and independent oversight for any agency carrying out interior immigration enforcement.

Why This Should Concern Every American, Not Just the Undocumented

Following passage of the 2026 budget reconciliation bill, ICE received roughly $45 billion for new detention capacity, on top of billions more for enforcement, making it the largest-funded federal law enforcement agency in the country. Internal planning documents describe $38.3 billion in warehouse conversions, including eight “mega-centers” holding up to 10,000 people each, plus sixteen regional processing sites. Detention capacity has grown from under 40,000 people at the start of this administration to roughly 70,000 today, with a stated goal of adding another 100,000 beds by the end of November 2026.

Large-scale detention infrastructure, once built, doesn’t disappear when the original justification for it fades, and it doesn’t limit itself to the population it was built for. American history has examples of exactly this: the same government machinery used to intern Japanese Americans during World War II wasn’t purpose-built for that; it was adapted from existing authority and infrastructure. Domestic surveillance programs built to target specific threats have, at various points in our history, been redirected against anti-war protesters, civil rights leaders, and political dissidents who posed no threat at all. That’s not a partisan claim about any single president. It’s a pattern in how unchecked government capacity tends to get used over time.

That’s why I take seriously the concerns raised by people across the political spectrum about where this kind of capacity could lead: civil-liberties advocates on the left have warned about detention infrastructure being turned against anti-war protesters or draft resisters in a future conflict. This is not just theoretical — given the current trend of events, there is a serious possibility President Trump will send ground troops to invade Iran, and that likely would require reinstituting the draft. Second Amendment advocates on the right have raised similar warnings about emergency powers being used against lawful gun owners after a crisis. A government with 170,000 detention beds has built a tool that will outlast the political moment that created it.