At today's rallies in opposition to the performative cruelty of Trump's immigration policies quite a few people endorsed the "Abolish ICE" idea. Now, these are people most animated by the outrages on our border. (I was planning on going, but had to work.) Their outrage is obviously targeted at those implementing these policies.
ICE is a terrible institution riddled with people who enjoy their work too much. But presumably, it is also full of law enforcement officers who are trying to do a necessary job. ICE needs reforming. But there seems to be a group that insists on living down to the most outrageous characterization of Democratic policies. No Democratic politician that I know of supports "open borders." I don't even know what open borders is supposed to mean. We will be traveling overseas this summer and we will need passports to get out of and into our own country. And that's fine.
We need an immigration policy that brings migrant workers out of the shadows and gives their status the protection of laws. We need to find a way to document those immigrants who live here, work hard and contribute to our economy, so that they, too, can have the protection of laws. We need a humane asylum policy. That's not the same as "open borders." It includes amnesty for those who have been here for years, but it does not simply open our borders to anyone who feels like they want to come here.
There is a role for an organization that enforces our immigration laws, and certainly the Border Patrol spends as much time helping lost migrants in the desert as making arrests. ICE has become symbolic of the wanton cruelty of Republican/white nationalist immigration policy. Perhaps it can't survice as ICE.
I would argue that you do that once you have power, not when you are trying to win power.
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