Abolish ICE
Abolere ICE; ICE DELENDA EST
America is under siege by armed forces hostile to its constitution, to its liberty, to its people, to our very way of existence and being. Until such time that the besieging forces have been routed, we exist in a precarious state of exception, where wanton state criminality is the norm and obsequious obedience demanded of all peoples. Let us put a name to these villains, and thereby come to know them for who they are.
ICE, or the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is a constituent agency of the Federal government under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. For the first century of America’s existence, immigration enforcement was more or less totally devolved to states and local courts, with simple magistrates handing out citizenships like candy to passerbys. It was only in 1876 that the Supreme Court concurred that Congress had the power to enforce immigration laws, and only around then did we actually start to do so.
First, we used immigration enforcement against Chinese people, taking advantage of a weakened, broken Qing state to bring in boatloads of cheap (almost enslaved) Chinese labor and then deport them once labor demand dried up (and ran afoul of a growing radical nativist labor movement). Then there were Red Scares of the 1910s and 20s, whereby we deported en masse tens of thousands of socialists and leftists yearly to random countries. After which, Congress began propping up the modern immigration enforcement scheme, using their powers of deportation against Mexican braceros who overstayed their welcome and of course, against American citizens of Japanese descent during WW2.
The concept of enforcing rules of who can stay where and when and for how long is of course older than America. During the epoch of small city states, the epoch of Athens and the like of the world, ‘citizenship’ meant the ability to live safely behind large stone or wood walls, with your voice in that community holding more or less equal weight to those around you (at least, within your socioeconomic class). Not everyone in the world could move into cities, as obviously there was limited space and resources. And, crucially, people could and did get kicked out.
In Athens, we have records of several being kicked out, such as Themistocles and Thucydides as well as Aristides and others. It is important to note that exile did not equate a death penalty, merely the loss of status, property, and family, hence why the Ancient Greeks thought ostrakismos to be a punishment worse than death (note: I am brushing over ostracism the act and am being loose with the word; technically a better word would be graphḗ paranómōn but this is not a historical thesis!).
Before the invention of ICE, Immigration and Naturalization Services managed immigration and deportation of persons under first the Department of Labor, then Justice. The INS was created in 1933, yet another creation of FDR’s New Deal. In 2003, the INS, alongside the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, minus the border functions of the INS, which included the Border Patrol and INS Inspectors (which themselves were spun off into the Customs and Border Patrol), was merged to form the organization we now know as ICE.
This was done in large part due to the apoplectic fear the terrorist attacks of 9/11 unleashed upon the American political and financial system. Civilian air travel needed to be ensured safe and secure, while the borders themselves needed to be guarded against potential hostile penetration. So went the argument at the time, and thus up went the ICE agency.
To the extent ICE keeps America safe or that it is necessary, either argument fails in light of the evidence. ICE is not on the front lines against drugs, against potential terrorists, against anyone dangerous or deadly other than fellow American citizens. The Federal Government already possesses three key agencies for national defense and security: the Department of Defense, the Justice Department (specifically, the FBI), and the US Intelligence Community (USIC, a grouping of several agencies which include the CIA and are overseen by the Director of National Intelligence). Broadly speaking, the USIC tracks targets overseas and abroad, the Justice Department when they are in country (including to execute arrests), and the Department of Defense providing logistical and sometimes lethal support as needed.
In none of these operations is the extra hand of ICE or even the Department of Homeland Security, its parent organization, truly needed. In theory therefore, the department already has no purpose. In practice? The murder of Renee Good and the ongoing abuses of power reveal ICE’s true purposes, as a tool to brutalize Americans and to transform America into a Trumpist military autocracy, with ICE appearing as a Sturmabteilung or Schutzstaffel-like paramilitary enforcer for the fascist state.
Thus we turn to the word ‘Abolish’. Oh, ‘woe is us!’ cry and hue some Democrats when they hear the word ‘abolish’. It conjures memories of 2020, when a mass popular movement erupted in the aftermath of a shockingly brazen racist murder by uniformed police officers of an unarmed and innocent-of-any-crimes Black man named George Floyd coalesced around the policy demand to Abolish the Police. Police departments could no longer be trusted as the arbiters of life and death, and that their power monopoly to command the death of American civilians without any promise of justice or recourse led many to march, even in the face of a deadly pandemic.
Mass protest movements have little staying power, however, especially when the inciting incidents (food shortages, police brutality, etc.) become isolated and rare, when no hope of reform becomes real. So it was with the George Floyd protests: they petered out, as police brutality receded in the public consciousness (even though it still happened and still does happen every day), and as any chance for systemic change died in the halls of Congress.
And yet the word Abolish has returned, a specter to fear or an arbiter to rejoice, depending on your proclivities. The word does indeed sponsor fear, as to get rid of the police, to get rid of ICE raises the imminent question of: who will replace them? At least for the police question, a satisfactory answer with mass consensus was never found. (Personally, as someone born and raised in Brazil, as someone who wants to see US Presidents locked up, we need an independent judiciary with powers of enforcement and investigation, targeted against politicians and the elite; we also need a single Federal police that oversees and directs all state and local police branches).
But for ICE, we already have a satisfactory answer: a holy troika between Defense, Justice, and Intelligence already keeps America safe. We don’t need more departments or more branches for the Presidents to oversee. ICE offends, not just because it brutalizes and murders Americans in the street, not just because it disrupts families and businesses with its wanton brutality, but because it is an extraneous use of our tax dollars, to pursue white supremacist and racialist agendas.
Thus: we must abolish ICE. But what does that mean? Abolish, from its Latin root abolere, means to destroy, to annihilate, to render non-existent. To rid ourselves of this moral stench, to liberate our Republic from these feckless criminals, we must demand no less of ICE but its total destruction, both literally and figuratively. Specifically:
Every badge, challenge coin, and otherwise official ICE insignia must be gathered and destroyed.
Every ICE-owned building must be either transferred to non-enforcement agencies or auctioned off to the public.
Every mention of ICE’s role in law and regulation must be stricken from the books.
Every manager and executive of ICE who was serving on or after January 20th, 2025, must be indicted for criminal negligence, tortious violation of civil rights, and conspiracy against the United States.
Every other ICE employee must be placed on a global ‘do not hire’ list, excluding them from opening bank accounts, accessing finances, being hired by any private or public employer, or otherwise existing in society until such time that Congress lifts such a ban, which they should only do on individual, extraordinary cases. Expelled from public and private life, these individuals will either be forced to flee America or live in abject poverty for the rest of their miserable days.
Every city that experienced Trumpist ICE raids should receive a tax jubilee, whereby all residents at the time of the raid are excused from paying taxes for up to three years.
Every memory of ICE is damned and scourged from our collective minds.
That last one may be impossible without some sort of mass hypnosis machine, but absent that, all other policy demands are not only feasible, but the only possible way Democrats or really any Americans have any hope of surviving the future. It’s certainly the metric by which voters should judge any candidate for office. ICE after all has already gone after elected Democrats. Surely they know the risk and threat that these paramilitaries pose to their own selves? If they do not abolish ICE, they abolish themselves!
And they shouldn’t delude themselves and think that ICE will serve them loyally once they are in charge. ICE follows the loyal commands of its masters, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. They will continue to do so even after Miller and Trump are both gone. Do you think there are any non-racialists in ICE? You’d be more likely to find non-communists in Stalin’s Communist Party. The only way to secure our liberty therefore lies in the destruction of ICE.
Cato once said ‘Carthago Delenda Est’, a near-genocidal demand to destroy the Carthaginian peoples and their city. We say, out of necessity of our own survival, ‘ICE Delenda Est’, a non-genocidal demand to destroy an out-of-control paramilitary force brutalizing our cities. It is the only demand we have left.