Abolish ICE? Absolutely -- and DHS too

[marmar]

Abolish ICE? Absolutely — and DHS too
No reform can fix Trump’s corrupt secret police — and the whole bureaucracy of repression should go as well

By Mike Lofgren
Contributing Writer
Published February 28, 2026 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) We might as well get this out of the way first, to preempt any swooning by the milquetoast wing of the Democratic Party: Yes, abolishing ICE would leave immigration statutes on the books, and those laws should be enforced. Anyone proposing to abolish ICE must also propose replacing it with a vastly improved successor organization.

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To understand why that’s necessary may require a fuller examination of the history of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency’s full title. It was conceived in a lie, birthed through political logrolling by panicky politicians who didn’t know what they were doing, and housed within an equally dysfunctional parent bureaucracy. As a professional staff member of Congress, I was present at the creation. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, except as a congressional effort to be seen as “doing something,” and an attempt to divert attention from George W. Bush’s failure to take seriously the many warning signs that preceded the worst terrorist attack in our history. In retrospect, it looks even worse than that.

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As a new agency staffing up rapidly, DHS wanted to hire people fast. Thus it became a dumping ground for everybody’s brother-in-law or the sons of rich donors to the Republican National Committee. This aspect received national exposure after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, when we could all witness the sterling performance of FEMA director Michael D. Brown, whose previous disaster-relief experience consisted of breeding Arabian horses. His accomplishments also provided a catchphrase that summed up the competence of the Bush administration: “Heckuva job, Brownie!”

ICE itself was a classic bureaucratic creation. The legacy organizations dealing with immigration were the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Border Patrol, both under the Department of Justice. It would have been logical to consolidate them into one agency within DHS, but some administrative genius made the Solomonic decision to form two different agencies with overlapping functions, Customs and Border Protection and ICE. CPB has gone on to greater infamy for its corruption (for instance, agents taking bribes from drug smugglers) and even for its cameo role in the Jeffrey Epstein saga: providing concierge service to the serial abuser during his frequent trips to Little St. James Island (which became known to Caribbean locals as Pedophile Island). .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/02/28/abolish-ice-absolutely-and-dhs-too/