Reject appeasement. Reject counter-insurgency.

We can stop at nothing less that the total dissolution of ICE

Senate Democrats have agreed to fund DHS for two more weeks. Their compromise passed the Senate, and on Monday the House will likely send the bill to Trump’s desk. What Chuck Schumer says is that in these coming two weeks, they’ll negotiate and somehow get Republicans to agree to modest proposals to slightly reform ICE.

The two big problems with this are, first, that “by allowing spending for most of the government to be approved, they [the Democrats] give up a large bargaining chip to ensure their demands, however milquetoast, are taken seriously,” as Chris Walker writes. Secondly, the proposed reforms themselves are massively inadequate. So far, Schumer has whittled down the various demands being made around ICE to three proposals theoretically intended reign in the agency. They are as follows:

1: End roving patrols by immigration agents and tight rules requiring the use of warrants.

2: Create a universal code of conduct for federal agents when it comes to the use of force.

3: Forbid agents from wearing masks, require them to display their identification more clearly, and make body cameras an essential feature of their work.

As David Dyden lays out in The American Prospect, “Arguably many of these conditions are already part of ICE and CBP standards; the problem is a lack of enforcement.” Other Democrats have been issuing far more significant demands of ICE in recent weeks. In fact, the entire Democratic caucus, plus two Republicans, already voted to strip ICE of the $75 billion allotted to it in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” and re-allocate it to fund Medicare. That measure failed by a slim margin, but it makes clear that the ceiling for our demands should be exponentially higher than minor tweaks around the edges of the Gestapo, particularly tweaks that are nearly unenforceable.

As long as Trump’s secret police and kidnapping force is getting tens of billions of dollars, as long as their funding triples this year, they will continue to be a violent force terrorizing this country and executing people both in the streets and in their detention camps. The power of Congress is intended to come from its control of the purse strings, and meaningfully pulling funds from the federal agents kidnapping, terrorizing, and killing people is the bare minimum we should expect the Democratic Party to aim for.

Well, more precisely, defunding ICE and aiming for its abolition is the bare minimum we should force the Democrats to aim for. There are now more Americans who support abolishing ICE than there are who oppose it. Among Democrats, an overwhelming 76% want to abolish the agency in its entirety. The base is clear, but once again party leadership is wildly out of touch with its own voters.

The people in the streets are just as clear as the people in the polls. Across the country millions have now protested ICE at thousands of events, with several hundred protests taking place in the last two weeks alone. And these massive crowds, reaching into the six figures in multiple cities, aren’t pushing for minor reforms. The crowds want ICE abolished, want the Gestapo agents prosecuted, want DHS torn down — the masses want a bold, decisive fight against fascism, not symbolic, milquetoast “resistance” that talks a big game but fails to meet this moment with necessary action.

Perhaps what should inform our approach most of all is the fact that ICE and border patrol aren’t stopping their terror. The demotion of Greg Bovino and the outcry after the murder of Alex Pretti led millions to hope that the federal forces would back down from their siege of Minneapolis. That has not happened. There was a brief moment when the feds appeared to be on the back foot in a way that could have significant repercussion, but that moment passed without the Democrats seizing it. Now Trump is explicit that he won’t instruct his secret police to leave Minneapolis. And the people on the ground, the people fighting ICE every day, are clear that feds are still camping outside schools, still kidnapping their neighbors, still terrorizing their city.

The brave people on the ground are also clear that they’re still fighting back. Tenants across the Twin Cities have formed a historic, area-wide tenant union, largely to support one another as the siege of their cities takes an increasingly difficult toll. Multiple neighborhoods have set up barricades where neighbors are let through, but ICE and CBP are not. Friday saw another massive series of walk-outs, sick-outs, business closures and demonstrations against ICE terror.

And the fight has grown across the country. For two weeks running, millions of people have taken action against ICE in hundreds of cities and towns. And the most recent round of these protests saw significant escalations, with people in Baltimore surrounding their ICE field office and directly addressing the feds, folks in LA blockading the entrance to their federal building, and hundreds of thousands of people learning how to monitor ICE agents, joining networks, and stepping up to organize against the fascist apparatus.

Now is not the time for half-measures. Now is not the time to accept phony pseudo-conciliatory gestures from the regime, or from the party that claims to oppose fascism. ICE is killing people both in the open and out of sight. Their terror continues unabated. They continue to defy the law, invade our homes, and attack those who dare to question them. Ground yourself in this difficult reality — refuse the allure of false hope in the face of a real, deadly fascist onslaught.

Now more than ever we need a clear head, and honesty with ourselves about this crisis. False solutions, like telling ICE to not kidnap U.S. citizens (something they’re already not supposed to be doing in the first place) is not enough. The rug needs to be pulled out from under them, their funding must be stripped, and those who claim to lead us cannot be allowed to settle for anything less.

Right now we must reject compromise with fascists. We must reject appeasement. Now is the time to push toward what you know is our moral imperative. Abolishing ICE is not only necessary, it’s reasonable. The establishment wants you to think that the abolition of ICE is radical, but ICE is one of the newest government agencies. Lebron James began playing in the NBA the same year that ICE was founded. DHS is only as old as the presidency of George W. Bush. The establishment position that no harmful government agency should ever be abolished is the extreme, unreasonable position. Eliminating those aspects of our government that hurt us, that enable fascism, that make society worse is the reasonable, necessary stance.

So don’t settle for less. Don’t settle for policies that put lipstick on a fascist pig and call it a day. The abolition of ICE is a clear stance that we can and must organize around, and that we must force anyone with a scintilla of power to embrace and push for. Reject the idea that fascism can be appeased, reject the idea fascism can be reformed, reject the idea that you should placate yourself and limit the horizons of your resistance in the face of fascists laying siege to communities around the country.

We can and should fight, and we should do it now. No one needs to wait for things to get worse, no one needs to wait for fascism to advance even further, no one needs to wait for ICE to show up at our front door before we fight back. Join your local ICE watch, get plugged into organizing, find the people doing the vital work and figure out how you can aid their efforts. The time to meaningfully resist is right now, not when it’s too late. And the people who must meaningfully resist are you and me. No one is coming to save us — but we can come together, organize and fight, and save one another. - JP

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