Restore Our Democracy: #AbolishICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — isn’t a necessary organization. Abolishing ICE wouldn’t result in “open borders.” But it could absolutely lead to more efficient enforcement, and it would undoubtedly save taxpayers. And it wouldn’t just save taxpayers money. It would also free taxpayers from being complicit in one of America’s most brutal and overtly totalitarian organizations.

I’m not exaggerating when I refer to ICE as totalitarian. Hannah Arendt coined the term “Totalitarian” in the mid-20th century. Her seminal work, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” is over 700 pages long, describing the systems in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, where state and party interests were merged into one all-encompassing political system that made it impossible for individuals to separate their own lives from the totalitarian state.

Arendt describes the organizations in totalitarian systems as convoluted, redundant and hierarchically confusing. Arendt writes, “As a matter of fact, duplication of offices […] is only the most conspicuous sign of a more complicated phenomenon that is better defined as multiplication of offices than duplication.”

Despite the pearl-clutching from the right, abolishing ICE wouldn’t result in open borders — because ICE isn’t the only agency that is mandated to protect the borders. We have another organization that is tasked with patrolling and protecting the borders. It is called the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. They’re the folks checking passports and customs forms for international travelers. They’re also running checkpoints at various places along both the Canadian and Mexican border, and every port of entry.

What is ICE’s mandate? Since ICE was established in 2003 alongside Customs and Border Protection, the organization’s mandate has been unbelievably broad, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforces federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration to promote homeland security and public safety.”

And even though it is a broad mandate, every single aspect of that mandate is covered by other agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

Border control and customs enforcement? Covered by Customs and Border Protection, assisted by state troopers, the Coast Guard, local police and sheriffs (and the National Guard). Trade? Covered by the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, Customs and Border Protection, and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Homeland security and public safety? Covered by the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, along with state and local police and the National Guard.

ICE’s broad mandate is typical of totalitarian organizations, as Arendt notes: “Mostly such orders were ‘intentionally vague, and given in the expectation that their recipient would recognize the intent of the order giver, and act accordingly’; for the elite formations were by no means merely obligated to obey the orders of the Fuehrer […] but ‘to execute the will of the leadership.’”

Former ICE Director Thomas Homan told Tucker Carlson in June that his men shouldn’t be compared to Nazis, because they’re “simply enforcing the laws enacted by Congress.” The irony seemed lost on Homan that that is almost verbatim what high-ranking Nazis claimed during the Nuremberg Trials.

And Homan’s claim was untrue. ICE at the time of that interview was operating under an Executive Order issued in January 2017. Trump changed the order recently to end family separation, but the fact remains that ICE operates chiefly at the president’s discretion, and not at Congress’.

Hell, even though Congress holds the power of the purse, ICE blows through money like a drunken sailor.

As Mary Small wrote in The Hill in March 2018, “It sounds like ICE makes up the numbers it reports to Congress. The president’s recently-released budget calculated the number of detention beds “needed” based on a rigorous predictive model but included two different numbers, $2.5 billion to detain 47,000 people per day and $2.7 billion to detain 52,000 people per day.”

ICE’s lack of financial oversight is directly tied to its lack of congressional oversight. The organization is not just inefficient — it also operates outside the scope of democratic accountability.

And ICE isn’t content to waste federal tax dollars — they also want support from local and state tax dollars. Case in point: because of protests against ICE in Portland, Oregon, the union that represents ICE has asked Portland Mayor Tom Wheeler to protect ICE with Portland police.

Think about that. ICE has not only usurped police powers of arrest in Portland, but because of public outcry against ICE, ICE’s union is now asking that Portland’s taxpayers foot the bill for Portland police to protect ICE agents.

One would think that states’ rights and fiscal conservatives would be up in arms that a federal agency is not only usurping local police powers, but also that the feds have the gall to ask local police to protect them while they are usurping local police powers. I think the simpler idea would be to cut ICE out of the equation and let Portland police, in conjunction with Customs and Border Protection, state police and the FBI and the DEA, deal with immigration and drug issues in Portland.

As it stands, ICE operates simply as a federal “papers, please” deportation force. They do so without any real financial oversight from Congress. They are functionally only accountable to the President. And the only way they have space to operate is by usurping power and funding from other agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

The United States needs immigration reform and a comprehensive immigration plan. And that needs to include an extensive review of what agencies have overlapping mandates, and then those agencies need to be streamlined so that America’s many defense and law enforcement agencies are distinct and clear in their missions.

It’s time 1) to #AbolishICE and 2) to create a more efficient, and less totalitarian, system of defense and border protection for the United States.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

Postscript: In the bigger picture, it’s not just ICE that is unnecessary — the Department of Homeland Security, which ICE is a part of, is likewise a superfluous and unnecessary organization.

DHS was created after 9/11 to prevent the next 9/11 — but the agencies that already existed to protect America HAD THE INFORMATION NECESSARY to prevent 9/11. The Bush administration failed to act on that information. It’s difficult to imagine how DHS would have changed the outcome. DHS’ mandate is “to secure the nation from the many threats we face.” But that’s also what the Department of Defense does, along with the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and state and local police departments. In this way, ICE is a redundant agency operating as part of a larger redundant department. We could, and should, strip down the layers of authority to create a clearer and more effective system of domestic defense.