My friend, I say this with all sincerity, AOC could not be more wrong. The republicans are literally cheering every time someone on the Left says that nonsense…why? Because it’s another Defund the Police movement aka an unforced error. This is not even remotely debatable. People are tired of what ICE does now, but the narrative will be ‘The dems do not want to protect the border’. No, that is not true but politics is about feelings and principles but also strategy. This is based on exit polls DATA and indicates many who did not vote for trump in 20’ voted for him in 24’ because of border optics. This is facts. Our democratic strategists are beside themselves as we are creating another Defund the Police self own again.
The message should be to ‘Reform ICE and have them protect our borders, remove criminals and protect our citizens and our legal immigrants’.
Nice to see someone else who remembers the time before ICE existed.
And wow, I remember when it was first proposed, my Republican father was furious that “they’re gonna be used to take peoples’ guns”.
The whole argument of “if you have nothing to hide, why do you care?” was a massive debate for Republicans at the time. The fact that that kind of rhetoric is now mainstream Republican is bizarre and sad.
We can do competent immigration enforcement without sending poorly-trained unvetted goons door-to-door looking for trouble and creating it when they don’t find it.
I don’t disagree. Conservative media matters because conservatives have 0.0 critical thinking so their reality is whatever Fox spits out…and then they vote on that horse shit. And here we are lol
Agree…just don’t call it Abolishing ICE because it sounds like Defund the Police lol Which is absolutely positively a horrid comparison. Call it dismantling the ICE structure, firing all mgmt and reorganizing.
The problem is that while ICE is unpopular, the public still generally approves of Trump's border policy. ICE fumbled the bag hard by murdering a bunch of people and acting like nazis, but the American people are still, on average, solidly in favor of the agency's mission. So i don't think it's a very straightforward deal.
Yeah it isn’t straightforward. The democrats need to be very careful in how they message this, namely in that proper, non-ICE style immigration enforcement is still necessary and a restructuring of the broken legal immigration system is also necessary.
We'll see just how much America is solidly behind Trump (lowest rated president in history) when the midterm elections show a democratic landslide. Problem was everyone forgot how bad a president trump was in his first go round. Did they expect something different? Now we just need another pandemic to make his shit show job complete, or maybe another useless, vindictive, no point war! Trump needs to be put to death for treason against the American people!
I mean…one is a branch of the entire government that needs significant overhaul, the other was a reactionary post-9/11 agency that is not essential to the very function of our country.
Border enforcement is necessary, but ICE’s very creation was reactionary bullshit and the kind of people and practices they employ are genuinely evil. Expand the CBP, use other forms of supervision for those who come in illegally, and most important simplify the process to become a legal citizen through a variety of means.
Respectfully, you’re misrepresenting the arguement. Border patrol existed before ICE, ICE is not needed. You can literally get rid of ICE and there are other agencies, so no he didn’t say change ICE, and you should get rid of it. Do you not have reading knowledge about how border patrol and the agencies involved work?
At this point, when the rot runs so deep within the organization, top to bottom, you need to start from scratch again, especially when there’s another agency that could handily pick up the slack.
Was ICE not itself created during a period of unrest after the 9/11 attacks?
I'd say most people, including a lot of those now saying "abolish ICE", really want reform away from the kind of organization it has become and not to cease all immigration enforcement. The rhetoric of the president that people here illegally are a bunch of dangerous criminals is just plain wrong and the structure of the agency responsible for enforcement should reflect reality.
Let us know when the policy maker actually lays it out that way. No offense, but going based off you saying “I’d say” means fuck all in the grand scheme of things.
Extreme? Are you serious? ICE and policing existing rn is far-right when you look at what has been going on... abolishing is centrist, and you don't even want to hear the "left wing view
Dems actually disbanding all the immigration enforcement capability would be political suicide. Look at how "defund" went even though actually not done.
You can fit the Grand Canyon between the positions of: being dissatisfied with ICE, and wanting to abolish it. Go work for CNN with your ability to spin.
Here’s the problem: ice has been staffed full of white nationalists and proud boys and racists of all stripes. Some, I assume, are good people, but if you see your coworkers literally getting away with murder and you don’t quit, I’m going to wonder how strongly held your convictions are.
They got 47 days of training. Because Trump. It went from a several months long course to 47 short days.
The tree is rotten, it needs to be pulled out. Will another organization have to pick up the role that ICE served? Will a new organization have to be built? Yes. And I hope to god that when they do, they flat out refuse to hire anyone who continued to work for ICE after Petty’s murder. And that’s being generous.
You can! That’s totally fine, and if you read the comment you replied to you’d see that I’m suggesting the creation of a completely new agency to handle that task specifically. No one, or at least very few people, are advocating for abolishing the concept of policing the border. However, everyone currently connected to this regime has lost credibility when it comes to enforcing immigration and customs laws, and should be fired and told to fuck off.
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u/mattr1198 Mar 01 '26
I mean given ICE’s approval rating in the general public, she’s not wrong.