We Can Have Nice Things When We Stop Funding Hate

We really need to have a serious discussion about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was created in 2003 under the Homeland Security Act, following the attacks on September 11, 2001. It was started under George W. Bush and put together by Congress by merging the investigative branches of the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It’s original and ongoing purpose has been to “protect national security and public safety.”

I’ll circle back and look at the Homeland Security Act in a subsequent article. Today I’m focused on ICE.

Throughout its history, the agency’s focus has “evolved” depending on the administration in power. While the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) has continually focused on immigration enforcement, the breadth of that enforcement - along with the funding it receives - has escalated. As the target has shifted to one of a more oppressive and xenophobic nature, ICE has faced significant controversy and criticism. For good reason.

From its beginning, critics argue ICE was built on a flawed premise. By placing immigration enforcement inside the newly created Department of Homeland Security, the United States government structurally reframed immigration. Rather than viewing it as an administrative or civil matter, it was explicitly treated as a matter of national security and counter-terrorism. During the Bush and Obama administrations (2008-2014), the agency aggressively expanded programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) Agreements. These are the programs which deputized local police forces to share data with ICE. The long-lasting impact created here has been pervasive fear in our immigrant communities. Hospital visits, calling the police, or a routine traffic stop could trigger deportation. The results during this time peaked at over 400,000 deported annually under Obama, earning him the nickname “Deporter-In-Chief” from activist critics. The argument was (and is) that the agency was tearing families apart.

The story and purpose surrounding ICE dramatically shifted during Trump’s first administration. Pre 2016, ICE operated under the guidelines of prioritizing individuals with serious criminal records. In 2017, the administration removed all enforcement priorities via executive order.

The impact felt with this difference was stark and alarming. Anyone without legal status became an immediate target. Arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants skyrocketed. They also shifted the tactics being used to effectuate this impact. ICE began arresting people at courthouses, churches, and schools, and conducted highly publicized workplace raids. This is also the time period when the popular public outcry began, with the birth of the pushback phrase “Abolish ICE.” This happened in 2018 as public outrage grew amidst family separations at the border.

The precedence of ICE being used as an authoritarian tool reached its apex following the return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025.

The Onset of un-American Protocols

With the passage of PL119-21 (the One Big Beautiful Bill), ICE became the largest and most well funded federal “law enforcement” agency in the history of the United States. Typically, ICE has operated with an annual budget of roughly $29 billion. Under the Trump regime, this has ballooned out of control. With PL119-21, Congress provided ICE with an additional $75 billion supplemental budget to be used over a period of a 4 year span. The breakdown of this supplemental budget allocates over $45 billion toward detention centers and roughly $30 billion to arrest, track, and deport immigrants. As a matter of historical context, ICE’s 2024 budget was roughly $9.2 billion.

To be clear and fair, the budget for ICE and its worsening effects became larger under both Democratic and Republican presidents. However, up until this point in our history, ICE was focused on dealing with securing off the southern border and immigrant crime. That is not the case anymore. This administration has said if you are here without authorization, you are a target.

The terminology of “without authorization” is intentionally vague. It is intended to be perceived by those justifying this type of targeting (to themselves but more often to those who criticize such conduct) as addressing some level of widespread law breaking by immigrants. The truth is, most immigrants are law abiding, and the vast majority of immigrants being targeted and detained have no criminal record, while in many cases, actual evidence of that law abiding conduct exists for anyone to see.

“Without Authorization” under this administration has come to mean anyone not having citizenship; this ranging from people who have fled hostile home country conditions as refugees to those who came here without the immediate threat to life present. They’ve genuinely come here in search of the same things all our ancestors came for: opportunity and a better life.

This administration has used ICE to target people based on their race, color, language, and beliefs. If that wasn’t enough, the Supreme Court said this is permissible conduct when it delivered its ruling on Noem v. Vasquez-Perdoms. In this ruling, they lifted a lower court ban on ICE’s roving patrols in Los Angeles. They gave ICE the legal authority to stop, question, and detain people based on appearance, language, accent, workplace, or any other marker that “looks suspicious” to them.

Racial Profiling.

This is straight up racism.

Let’s review what we know about all of this so far and why ICE was created and compare it with what they are actually doing.

ICE is supposed to be focused on national security.

• How are immigrant workers working on farms in the fields a threat to national security?

• How are immigrants at Home Depot or Woodman’s a threat to national security?

• How is it that the only citizens we’ve seen ICE target as “threats” are non-white people.

The current president was elected on a promise of “the largest deportation operation in in the history of our country.” If you ever believed his intention was well meaning, this precedent in itself is inherently flawed, in so much that he made such a promise on speculation. Donald Trump has no more verifiable fact of actual undocumented immigrants in this country than you or I do. At best, his statement was fearmongering on a massive scale. At worst, it was meant to give a green light to racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and the purveyors of such conduct.

The level of targeting was shifted even further when Trump outlined the protocols they will be using in his 2026 U.S. Counter Terrorism Strategy. In this “Strategy” was outlined those “whose ideologies are radically pro-transgender” as being top national security threats, and it outlines the authority being given to DHS to target any they deem fall within this category. Again, intentionally vague so as to be used as broadly as possible against those who don’t agree with the administration.

There is more than sufficient evidence to expose the actual intentions behind the current use of ICE. This evidence shows these motivations to be racist, xenophobic, transphobic, discrimination tactics of government sponsored malicious oppression, and it sets the reasoning clearly as to why this agency must be abolished and replaced, who the administration actually is, and also displays clear example of despicable misconduct by the Supreme Court in their allowance to permit it. This shows clear reason to strongly question and examine the ethics of these animus judges, and to see them expelled given the plain sight evidence of intentional detriment and treason.

We have a tax payer funded hate group in our country that targets, kidnaps, threatens, and kills people. It is staffed by violent insurrectionists, KKK members, and Proud Boys, all of these deplorables having enlisted because the cruelty has been the point.

Fully funded government hate. Yet we can’t find the funds for Medicare For All?

Bullshit.

We can have nice things and afford nice things when we stop funding operations that hurt people and tear the country apart.

I’m calling for the immediate abolition of ICE and will be doing so again when I get to the House floor. Any Congressperson who actually cares about the people of this country should be doing the same.

Abolish ICE. End of story.