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ICE is out of control and beyond repair
This agency needs to be stripped down to the studs. Dems should start preparing now.
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When President Trump told the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by” in his 2020 debate with Joe Biden, it became clear that he saw the far-right group and others like it as a kind of Trump militia, ready to act in his interests and at his instructions — which they did on January 6, 2021.
When Trump took office again in 2025, it was reasonable to fear that those malcontented white supremacists would be activated again, this time with an emboldened and angry president behind them.
But it hasn’t really happened; the paramilitary cosplayers dreaming of civil war as their beer guts spill out below their tactical vests have been remarkably quiet. That’s because Trump no longer needs them. He has his own army of thugs, one even more lawless and violent. It’s called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and it is out of control.
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State-level Democrats seem to have woken up to the fact that they need to work right now to contain ICE and limit its abuses. But their party should also start planning for the future, crafting a strategy to be implemented once they have institutional power at the federal level again.
Put simply, ICE needs to be stripped down to the studs.
Democrats have escalated their rhetoric
Something has definitely changed in Democratic rhetoric just in the last couple of weeks.
Officials are now suggesting that ICE agents are committing crimes and should be held accountable — which is very different from simply objecting to a policy shift. It’s fair to say this is a result not only of the street-level thuggery that has been so apparent, but the mounting evidence that top Trump officials feel unconstrained by the law, judges, or any established authority at all.
This is true of other agencies and individual as well — like the Border Patrol commander who was recorded personally throwing tear gas at protesters in violation of a court order — but ICE is the most visible and egregious offender.
“The tables will turn one day,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently said on a Chicago TV program. “These people should recognize that maybe they’re not gonna get prosecuted today, although we’re looking at doing that, but they may get prosecuted after the Trump administration because the statute of limitations would not have run out.”
Last week, Pritzker created an accountability commission “tasked with capturing and creating a public record of the conduct of federal law enforcement agents and recommending actions to hold the federal government accountable.” After reports that ICE agents are swapping license plates to avoid detection — which is illegal — the Illinois secretary of state created a “Plate Watch” hotline for people to report incidents of plate-swapping.
In a similar vein, New York Attorney General Letitia James created a portal where people can report ICE abuses and upload pictures and video so her office can determine if laws have been broken.