The editors of the Washington Post point out the obvious about the calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement:
The sudden call by some Democrats to abolish ICE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency whose multipronged mission includes deportation — makes a better bumper sticker than a blueprint for policy. Like eradicating the Internal Revenue Service, the GOP’s own recurrent shibboleth, scrapping ICE reflects the risible notion that offensive policies can be wished away by atomizing the agency that enforces them. They can’t be.
Many Americans — we count ourselves among them — are outraged by the Trump administration’s harassment, humiliation and hounding of immigrants, including the zero-humanity policy of deterring future migrants by separating children from their parents. The instrument of some (though not all) of those policies has been ICE. But it is just that: an instrument, wielded in every instance to enforce the will of President Trump and his administration.
I think we need to disaggregate the objectives of those calling for the abolition of ICE. Some are simply politically motivated full stop. Some actually believe in a right of immigration—they think that any attempt at securing our borders is immoral not to mention racist. Some mistakenly think that laws enforce themselves.
Others think, mistakenly, that if you take all of the people, all of the practices, and all of the policies that make up our immigration enforcement and create a new agency with another name all of the problems will go away with the old agency.
Innocent third parties are always injured by enforcing the law. They’re also injured by failing to enforce laws. We need to strike a balance among the conflicting interests. If that were easy, it would have been done decades ago and there would be no problem.
Abolish ICE means ending it as an extra-judicial deportation squad nestled within the national security state. Frankly, I’d be thrilled with abolishing DHS, but ICE alone is a good start.
I doubt that there’s a unanimous understanding of what it signifies among those who support abolishing it.
“Abolish ICE means ending it as an extra-judicial deportation squad….”
And the alternative is?
Our immigration policy is indeed racist and otherwise unfair in that, by excluding new immigrants in favor of the native born, it perpetuates the pronatalism that maintains the racial makeup we have and favors the breeders among us.
There is no humanitarian reason to heavily subsidize native breeding, especially when we can get foreign workers who are already educated and potty-trained for free. Many are multi-lingual and can speak English better then Amerikans.
I am a non-breeder who has long been forced to subsidize the national pronatalism. Much fairer would be to allow me, a non-breeder, the right to specify a foreign immigrant to sponsor, rather than breed like everyone else.
ICE is only about 15 years old IIRC. Immigration enforcement used to be seen as an economic duty. Now it has been turned into policing as par to Homeland Security. I am sure there is some tiny minority (but they will get lots of coverage) that wants to do away with all enforcement. We clearly need something, but if it was OK for Bush to reorganize it, I don’t really see it as set in stone and something we couldn’t change back to what it was or change it to something else.
Steve
Immigra has been hated for as long as I can recall. It doesn’t matter what it’s called.
I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security so I’m probably not the best advocate for keeping it as-is. I’d like to see what’s being proposed to replace ICE before I know whether getting rid of it is a good idea. As you’ve probably noticed, it’s a lot easier to propose getting rid of something than it is to produce a workable alternative.
ICE was created in response to the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission Report, so I think all of this is a dead end unless someone wants to look back at the findings and recommendations and propose an alternative.
PD- At the same time we passed the Patriot Act. At that time we, at least those running Congress, were willing to give up significant civil liberties for security, as well as invade other countries for no apparent reason. We know how that worked out, so not sure why we have to maintain all of what came out of that period.
Steve
The patriot act was passed in Oct 2001, DHS and ICE was created in Nov 2002. The 9/11 commission report was around 2004.
None of the 3 things was the direct cause of the others; although they were all a response to 9/11. DHS was a recommendation of a commission that predated 9/11. The 9/11 commission report caused the reorganization of intelligence agencies.