On Friday, theDemocraticmayor of Newark wasarrested and detainedin his own city by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents. His crime? Trying to gain access and inspection rights to a privately operated detention center that he says is in violation ofmultiple city lawsuits.
Three Democratic members of CongressaccompaniedRas Baraka to the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, as they exercised their owncongressionally mandated rightto enter Ice detention facilities for oversight purposes, without prior notice.
While Baraka was taken away in handcuffs, two of the House Democrats –Bonnie Coleman WatsonandLaMonica McIver– were shoved and manhandled by Ice agents outside the facility. The third,Rob Menendez, angrily accused Ice of feeling “no weight of the law and no restraint on what they should be doing. And that was shown in broad daylight today when they not just arrested the mayor of Newark but when they put their hands on two members of Congress standing behind me. How is this acceptable?”
It’s a good question. Elected Democrats are now under both legal and physical assault from a rogue agency, which behaves less like federal law enforcement and more likeDonald Trump’s private militia. And yet, elected Democrats refuse to call for its abolition. They seem to have decided that the continued existence of Ice is “acceptable”.
Despite the feverish claims from Republican politicians and Fox anchors about the Democratic party being “soft” on immigration enforcement, we’re a long way from 2018, when“abolish Ice”wasan actual sloganon the left and deployed by both prominent progressive activists and rising Democratic party stars, such as then newly electedAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez. EvenKirsten Gillibrand, a moderate New York senator, said she wanted to “get rid of [Ice], start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works”.Kamala Harris, then a California senator, said she believed in “starting from scratch” with Ice.
These days, however, elected Democrats, even of the progressive variety, have run a mile from the one-time campaign to dismantle Ice. The new Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, Greg Casar, for example,told Semaforlast month he had “changed” his mind on “Abolish Ice”. Ocasio-Cortez did not utter the words “abolish Ice” on her recent“Fighting Oligarchy” tourwith Bernie Sanders. And nor, for that matter, did the independent senator from Vermont, who once said he wanted to“break up”Ice.
What on Earth are elected Democrats, especially progressives, waiting for? How many more abuses of power and violations of the law does Ice have to commit? How unpopular does Trump have to get on theissue of immigration– especially on theissue of Ice deportations– before the so-called opposition take a much bolder stance on the future of Ice?
Consider some of the Ice horror shows from the past 30 days alone:
On 8 May, Ice agents“held a young girl’s face to the ground”while they detained her mother in Worcester, Massachusetts. A video of the incident fromTelemundo Nueva Inglaterrashows the teenage girl screaming as multiple agents and officers chase her and grab her legs.
On 7 May, Ice agents detained Jensy Machado, a US citizen, in northern Virginia with “guns drawn”, toquotethe Virginia Democratic congressman Don Beyer. Despite hisattemptto show his Real ID and prove his legal status, they put him in cuffs.
On 5 May, Ice agents detained Daniel Orellana, a 25-year-old Guatemalan, at a gas station in Framingham, Massachusetts. When they were told they had apprehended the wrong man,according to Orellana’s girlfriend, one of the agents said: “OK, but we’re going to take you anyway.”
On 4 May, a group of Ice agentsdetaineda man filling up gas in his truck at a gas station in Oxnard, California – and left his children behind on their own. “They arrested someone,” said an eyewitness. “They left the children inside the truck.”
On 26 April, court papers filed by the Department of Homeland Securityadmittedthat Ice agents did not have a warrant when they arrested the Palestinian activist and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil in March.
On 24 April, in the middle of the night, Ice agents burst into the home of a family of US citizens in Oklahoma City, while executing a search warrant issued for someone else. The agentsorderedthe family outside into the rain in their underwear, the mother said, and confiscated their phones, laptops and all their cash savings as “evidence”.
On 22 April, Ice agents detained a mother and her two-year-old daughter, a US citizen, during a routine check-in with the agency in New Orleans andthen deportedthe mother back to Honduras with her American child. A Trump-appointed federal judge said he had a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”.
Also on 22 April, Ice agents in plain clothes, without badges or warrants,detainedtwo men during a raid on a courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia. Two bystanders who dared to ask those agents to show them a warrant were ordered not to “impede” the arrest and have since beenthreatened with prosecutionby Ice.
On 14 April, Ice agents stopped an undocumented Guatemalan couple in their car in New Bedford, Massachusetts, while looking for another man. When Juan Francisco and Marilu Méndez’s lawyer told them over the phone to stay in the car until she got there, the Ice agents used alarge hammerto smash the rear window of the car and drag them out.
Also on 14 April, we learned that Ice agents detained a 19-year old Venezuelan asylum seeker and deported him to theCecotprison in El Salvador – despite his lack of criminal convictions or even tattoos. During the arrest,according to his father, one Ice agent said: “No, he’s not the one,” as if they were looking for someone else, but another agent said: “Take him anyway.”
All of these incidents are just from the past month. Go back further, and I could goonandonandon.
So where are the Dems on this? Why aren’t they calling for an end to alawless,violent,deadly,institutionallyracist,sexually abusiveagency, whose employees’ union endorsed Trump for president in both2016and2020, and whose former acting director, Tom Homan, has become this administration’s gung-ho “border czar” and “the face of Trump’s cruelty”, toquotemy Zeteo colleague John Harwood?
Forget about talk of “reform”. At this point, there is no way to improve or “fix” Ice. It has to be abolished. Shut down. Scrapped. To quote Gillibrand in 2018, the entirety of immigration enforcement in the United States must be “reimagined”.
Meanwhile, assome Democratsobsess over opinion polls and worry about looking “soft” on the border, the actual experts on authoritarianism are sounding the alarm. The political scientist Lee Morgenbesser hascomparedIce to a “secret police” and says the agency “is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism”. Historian Ruth Ben-GhiatcallsIce the “foot soldiers” of the “fascists”. Even the “anti-woke” libertarians over at Reason magazinesayIce is on a “militaristic mission that effectively turns nonviolent immigrants into fugitives”.
Why would a future Democratic president or Democratic-controlled Congress want tokeepsuch a Gestapo-like outfit? And, sorry, but when did it become a political taboo to call for the abolition of a government agency? Republicans have spent decades trying to shut down a plethora of federal government departments. The current Trump administration hasguttedUSAID, established under John F Kennedy in 1961. Trump has signed anexecutive orderto try to force the “closure” of the Department of Education, which was first conceived of by Andrew Johnson in 1867. Republicans in Congress haveintroduced a billto abolish the IRS, which goes back to 1862 and Abraham Lincoln.
So why can’t timid Democrats call for the abolition of Ice, which wascreated only in 2003by George W Bush, making it even younger than Leonardo DiCaprio’scurrent girlfriend?
Both Ice and its Republican supporters in Congress see an opportunity right now. “The agency,”reportsthe New York Times, “is hoping to receive a large windfall from Republicans in Congress so it can spend as much as $45bn over the next two years on new detention facilities, a more than sixfold increase from what Ice typically spends to detain migrants.”
IfDemocratsare serious about stopping fascism, then they have to do everything in their power to prevent the ongoing expansion and further empowerment of Homan and his army of masked Ice thugs.
And if Democrats are ever able to win back office, there is only one right move here, politically, financially, and, above all else, morally: abolishing Bush and Trump’s Ice, once and for all.
Mehdi Hasan is a broadcaster and author, and a former host on MSNBC. He is also a Guardian US columnist and the editor-in-chief of Zeteo