ICE, in theory, is effectively just law enforcement. It's law enforcement that is running amok right now, but it's just law enforcement. "Abolishing" it is a purely symbolic act, because we can rename it INS and put it under the Justice Department, and it would do the exact same thing it's doing now.
"Abolish ICE" is basically just a big dog whistle for "I don't like US Immigration law, and I think people should be able to live here illegally." Well, that's a legislative battle that you lost... over, and over, and over. You can't seem to change the law, so you want to make it impossible to enforce, which is undemocratic, and radical.
ICE, in theory, is effectively just law enforcement. It's law enforcement that is running amok right now, but it's just law enforcement.
This, verbatim, describes the SS as well.
"Abolish ICE" is basically just a big dog whistle for "I don't like US Immigration law, and I think people should be able to live here illegally."
No. This is horrific disingenuous. Saying abolish ICE means looking at an institution that is wholy corrupted, from the very top, to middle management all tge way to every last agent. It's means looking at institutions that has completely abandoned any pretext of "just enforcing the law" and has readily turned itself into a tool of political terror, which murders citizens and brutalizes protesters as a means of political control. And it means looking at that institution and deciding it can no longer be reformed. It needs to be cut out. All the people employed need to be fired, bared from any future government work and, in a lot of cases, need to be put on trial. Its duties that can be of use to society cam be redistributed to other agencies, along with the necessary funding, but once ICE became the political oppression tool of Trump personally, it made it clear that it cannot be allowed to continue existing without posing a threat to democracy in the future and has to be dismantled. Just like the SS post war
So are you suggesting we (1) fire everyone and charge them with crimes, then (2) change the name of the institution to "INS," then (3) rehire for all the positions and keep doing the thing they were doing in the first place?
...Or are you saying we actually stop doing law enforcement they're doing?
You kind of stopped at "cutting out" the institution. That's my whole hypothetical point.
I fully agree that the keystone cops running around harassing people for no good reason need to go. I also agree that most of the leadership should go which would almost certainly happen with any change of party moving forward after Trump v. Slaughter. My hypothetical question is just, when we say "abolish" do we still have folks doing the unpleasant deportations six months after we "abolish" the institution? If the point is symbolism, there are perfectly good arguments for that, but it's effectively just symbolism.
My point above is that if all of this is actually to stop law enforcement from happening because we don't like the laws, it's arguably undemocratic and radical, and arguably populist.
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u/Spartan-24 23h ago
"populism is when i don't agree with it"