Public support for the call to abolish ICE is growing following the disturbing killing of Minnesota mother Renee Good and the steady stream of reports and video footage of similarly shocking abuses by ICE officers in Minneapolis and other cities.
New polls from The Economist and YouGov released this week confirm that support for ICE is rapidly eroding. For the first time, support for abolishing ICE exceeds opposition. With 46 percent to 43 percent.
Keeping ICE in its current form is also ten percentage points less popular than completely abolishing it.
Growing outrage and political reactions
An internal memo from Democratic consulting firm Blue Rose Research, first reported by The New Republic, found that 76 percent of respondents had seen the footage of ICE officer Jonathan Ross Good shooting three times and 86 percent had heard about the incident. Voters in this poll overwhelmingly supported measures that would require ICE officers to obtain a warrant before making an arrest (+29 points). Plus a ban on wearing masks (+16 points).
The outrage over ICE’s blatant abuse of power is so great that Democratic lawmakers are rushing to present voters with proposals that would appear to restrict the agency. Although there is a clear gap between public opinion and the comparatively mild measures that Democrats in Congress appear prepared to take.
Representative Ritchie Torres (Democrat of New York) was mocked online after he announced that he would introduce a bill that would require QR codes on uniforms that display name, rank and authority. Democrats Ro Khanna and Jasmine Crockett introduced the “ICE Oversight and Reform Resolution,” which, among other things, requires body cameras, de-escalation training and a mask ban.
Criticism of reform proposals
Such proposals, activists say, would do little to prevent attacks like those shown in the harrowing footage from Minneapolis and other US cities. In order to actually stop ICE, it is necessary to deprive the agency of its financial resources. And to end their power to arrest and detain people.
ICE was created in 2003 as part of the reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security. But as Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch, a coalition of organizations calling for an end to immigration detention, points out, this “foundation” was actually a consolidation of efforts previously carried out by several other agencies.
“For many years, collaboration between ICE and local police has been the reason deportations have exploded,” Shah said.
Historical roots of deportation policy
In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which increased penalties for immigrants – both documented and undocumented – and made deportations easier. After its founding in the early 2000s, ICE worked mostly in partnership with local police departments, assisting with arrests, detentions and deportations.
“For many years, particularly under Bush and Obama, the relationship between ICE and local police was the primary reason for the massive increase in deportations,” Shah said. “These small prison contracts, the agreements with sheriff’s departments, the cooperation with city police departments. That’s how people were fed into the system.”
A backlash followed. Many communities ended these cooperations and refused to let their police departments cooperate with ICE on immigration enforcement arrests or detentions. However, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act – Trump’s key budget law passed in July of last year – dramatically increased ICE’s budget. This reduced dependence on local partners and provided money to build a massive, federally run detention system that activists say will be difficult to dismantle later.
Massive budget expansion
“In my view, one of the most important developments of the past year was the passage of this budget law in July,” says Shah. For the past ten years, ICE has had a budget of four to five billion dollars annually. But under Trump’s law, it is expected to grow to more than $8 billion this year, more than $12 billion next year and nearly $16 billion by 2028. This is shown by calculations by Barry Kogan from the Center for American Progress.
A draft request for proposals obtained by The Washington Post last year showed that the federal government is working to create a “targeted feeder system” that would distribute migrants to one of seven large-scale detention centers across the country. According to the newspaper, the plan would allow ICE to detain up to 80,000 people at a time.
“Anyone who has worked against mass incarceration or US militarism knows that once you start building structures like that, they are extremely difficult to tear down,” says Shah. “Our job now is to block as much as possible. Yes, they got these funds. But we can still stop new detention centers from being built. We can continue to work to stop all of Stephen Miller’s fantasies.”
Resistance at the local level
Communities where new ICE facilities are planned – including Social Circle in Georgia and Merrimack in New Hampshire – are already mobilizing to stop these projects. This is one of the key ways, Shah said, that civilians themselves can slow down ICE’s continued growth.
Another approach to limiting ICE’s power is to defund this massive expansion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat of New York) is at the forefront of this movement. “We see what they’re doing with this reckless explosion in funding. I want everyone to understand: the cuts to your health care are funding exactly that,” she told reporters this week.
On Wednesday, Rep. Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced a bill that would roll back ICE funding and instead invest in tax credits to cushion rising health insurance premiums. “The One Big Beautiful Bill nearly triples ICE’s budget while families across the country struggle with higher premiums as tax breaks expire,” Moulton told WGBH.
Demands for abolition
On Thursday, Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan went even further. His “Abolish ICE Act” not only calls for completely eliminating funding. But also the dissolution of the entire authority within 90 days of the law being passed. “We need to reform ICE. But it now looks like ICE is beyond reform,” Thanedar said at a news conference. “ICE is completely out of control.”
It is still unclear how many of his colleagues will be willing to support this bill. The reluctance may also be due to recommendations from centrist think tanks such as Third Way and the Searchlight Institute, which warn Democrats against revisiting calls to abolish the agency. Such moves are “politically deadly.” Instead, the focus should be on “reform and retraining” of ICE.
For now, the most encouraging sign from the Democratic Party is their growing opposition to legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security this year. Party leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would not agree to any budget bill that either increases ICE funding or does not provide for new oversight mechanisms. “There is currently no bipartisan path forward for the Department of Homeland Security,” Jeffries said Wednesday. The fate of this bill, which must be passed by January 30, is the clearest test yet of how serious Democrats are about changing course at ICE.