Debate Desk
Should Immigration and Customs Enforcement Be Abolished?
Abolishing ICE would not end immigration law, only the agency that enforces it; reforming conduct and clarifying rules is the better answer.
The claim
Critics say ICE conducts raids that terrify communities, holds people in poor conditions, and uses tactics that undermine trust in government. They want it ended and its duties given to other agencies or dropped.
The answer in three points
- ICE exists because Congress wrote immigration laws that require enforcement. Abolishing the agency leaves the laws on the books, and someone must carry them out. The work would move to another agency or go undone, and the second outcome is the one critics seem to want.
- ICE has two main parts: enforcement and removal operations, and Homeland Security Investigations, which pursues smuggling, trafficking, child exploitation and cartel finance. Eliminating the agency would take apart the second set of duties along with the first.
- Legitimate concerns about conduct deserve answers: rules on where arrests may take place, standards of care in detention, training, body cameras, and oversight by inspectors general and courts. Those are reforms of a lawful agency, and conservatives who care about the rule of law should demand them.
An agency can be improved without being abolished. Oversight, clear rules and honest reporting are the tools of reform.
The numbers
- The Department of Homeland Security was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and ICE was established within it in 2003, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
- ICE's Homeland Security Investigations division is responsible for investigations of transnational crime, and the agency reports tens of thousands of criminal arrests in a typical year.
- The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General publishes inspections of ICE detention facilities, according to the Office of Inspector General.
What they will say next
"Border Patrol and the courts could do the job." Then the agency simply has a new name and the same job. Moving it does not answer the policy question, which is whether to enforce the law.
"ICE is a recent creation." It is, and agencies can be reorganized. Reorganization is a legitimate discussion if the aim is better enforcement. It becomes an argument against enforcement when the duties vanish.
"Detention conditions are bad." Where they are, inspectors should report it and Congress should fund fixes. Standards belong in the law and in inspections open to the public.
"People fear any contact." Clear rules, such as limiting enforcement at schools, churches and hospitals, can address that fear without ending the law.
Order and mercy are both needed. The test of an agency is whether it follows the law, and it should be held to that test.
"Other countries do not have a separate agency like ICE." Many have comparable agencies under different names, and the point of the American design is the division of duties between border and interior enforcement. Whatever the structure, the functions must be performed.