Why "Abolish ICE" Won't Happen

I was having a back-and-forth with a reader and wanted to write down some thoughts that came from our discussion.

I think it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that there’s a lot of public support for a serious crackdown on ICE, whether that means complete abolition, cutting funding, etc. There’s polling that shows that ICE is very unpopular with Democrats, but also not popular at all with Independents. And Republicans aren’t superfans.

So the question isn’t whether coming out with a plan to get ICE under control is popular. The question is why the Democrats won’t do it. Here are my reasons:

1. Democratic leadership is incredibly rigid and inflexible about messaging, for a number of reasons. One is that many of them live in the 90’s, when the conventional wisdom is that Clinton won because of laser-like focus on the economy rather than other issues. Another is that they’ve created a Politburo-like decision making process where everything has to be poll tested and run through a baroque process that takes the bite an urgency out of messages.

2. There are a group of Democrats who are permanently scared of any moves that make us seem less “tough” on immigration. Nevermind that the ICE crackdown is mainly rounding up honest, hard-working immigrants whose only “crime” is being in the country without the proper papers.

3. Mouthing off to cops and demonstrating against ICE is seen as uncouth by a non-trivial number of Democratic leadership and donors. The sixties were the time when demonstrating was done the right way, and the today’s youth are a bunch of spoiled brats who just need to shut the fuck up.

4. Donors generally donate to keep Democrats moving right. Shitting on ICE isn’t popular with Fox News, which is the network those donors watch, so we can’t do it.

There are also a number of structural issues that will keep “defunding ICE” from being the 2026 campaign slogan:

1. We’ll be incredibly lucky to get a majority in the Senate. Mary Peltola’s decision to run for Senate in Alaska puts that state in play, but the path to 51 is paved with some lucky breaks.

2. Fetterman is a total wild card and, as usual, there are probably a couple of other Democratic Senators who have roughly the same views who are hiding behind him.

3. We’re more likely to win the House than the Senate but even that body will have a number of Marie Glusenkamp Perez types who will obstruct “progressive” votes. Also, Hakeem Jeffries.

Put that all together and we have a Democratic majority that, best case, will get very little done. Does this mean that we give into despair? Nope — we just need to make sure we are looking at the right timeframe. Moving the Democratic Party to the left (or, really, turning them into fighters rather than splitters) isn’t the project of one or two cycles. We’re talking a decade at best to have a party that is actually excited about abolishing ICE and making the politically hard choices necessary to extinguish Trumpism and MAGA.

Our project must be to primary any office holder who is weak on the key issues of fighting fascism, to demand better leadership, and to work on building party infrastructure at the town, county and state level. The sooner we accept that this is a long-term project, and get started, the better.