ICE on ice? Move to abolish ICE, at center of storm in immigration battle, has a long way to go

John Bacon | USA TODAY

The nascent liberal crusade to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency claimed modest victories this week, but the movement has a long way to go before ICE is put on ice.

Monday, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said he would introduce legislation to eliminate the agency. Tuesday, activist and political upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned powerful, 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary in New York.

Ocasio-Cortez's populist platform includes Medicare for all, higher education for all – and shutting down ICE.

"It’s time to abolish ICE, clear the path to citizenship and protect the rights of families to remain together," said Cortez, 28, a Latina who ran an aggressive, liberal campaign in a district that includes parts of Queens and the Bronx, where about half the population is Latino.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell University Law School who has written extensively on immigration law, said ICE isn't going anywhere soon. It's detractors, he said, don't have the votes on either side of the aisle.

"Even if the Democrats take control of Congress in November, the chances of abolishing ICE are slim to none," he told USA TODAY. "Every agency has to have an enforcement branch. Immigration is no exception. If Congress eliminated ICE, it would have to create some other immigration enforcement entity.”

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ICE has been in the center of the storm over family separations at the border. The Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration edict had ICE arresting undocumented immigrants entering the country without using legal entry points. Children were placed with the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Donald Trump ordered the separations halted, but the details on what is next are being worked out.

Rosemary Jenks is director of government relations for Numbers USA, which describes itself as an immigration reduction organization. She said ICE should be lauded for the crucial and difficult job it performs.

"Abolishing (ICE) would be absolutely insane," she said. "In my mind, that is basically a call for open borders. I don't think the American people would support abolishing ICE, I don't think members of Congress would support it and I don't think the president would support it."

Hemanth Gundavaram, co-director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at Northeastern University in Boston, disagrees. He said the cost of ICE far outweighs the threat from immigrants. ICE, he said, has become a tool for Trump to “implement his racist and xenophobic” immigration policies.

“Our immigration system should not exist to focus solely on national security and terrorism,” Gundavaram said. “ICE represents the idea that all immigration is dangerous and a threat to our security.”

ICE was created in 2003, part of a massive post-9/11 reorganization that included disbanding the Immigration and Naturalization Service in favor of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and ICE, which enforces immigration law within the USA.

Its foes note that the era also brought the USA Patriot Act and the Iraq War. Ocasio-Cortez called the founding of ICE "part of an unchecked expansion of executive powers" that led to an erosion of civil rights.

Pocan wants to create a commission to provide recommendations to Congress for an immigration enforcement system that "upholds the dignity of all individuals." He announced his proposed legislation after a trip to the southern border.

“It was clear that ICE, and its actions of hunting down and tearing apart families, has wreaked havoc on far too many people," he said in a statement. "Unfortunately, President Trump and his team of white nationalists ... have so misused ICE that the agency can no longer accomplish its goals effectively.”