Trump’s immigration crackdown has Democrats wrestling with ‘abolish ICE’ movement

As President Donald Trump’s immigration surge in Minnesota winds down, it’s revived a thorny debate among Democrats in Washington: whether to eliminate the 23-year-old agency at the center of the crackdown.

Among those leading the push to “abolish ICE” — short for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — is progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar, who said “the moment demands it” after thousands of federal agents flooded the state for Operation Metro Surge and two Minnesotans were killed.

“Holding lawbreaking ICE agents legally accountable is the bare minimum,” Omar said during a news conference at Karmel Mall in Minneapolis in late January. “We must abolish ICE.”

The debate comes as Congress is grappling with the fallout from the six-week operation in Minnesota. Democrats have been united in opposing additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security until changes are made to the agency, including requiring ICE agents to unmask and wear identification. Some want to see DHS Secretary Kristi Noem impeached. The agency shut down last weekend after lawmakers went into recess without passing a funding bill.

The idea of abolishing ICE, which surfaced during Trump’s first term, is again gaining steam among progressives in response to the aggressive tactics used by agents in Minneapolis.

But Democrats are far from united on whether ICE should be abolished. Concerns about border security helped deliver Trump a second term, and some worry Republicans could try to tie all Democrats to the slogan much as they did with “defund the police.”

“The Republicans have been able to weaponize these kinds of slogans before and make it seem like all Democrats think that there should not be any immigration enforcement,” said Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president of the centrist think tank Third Way.

Elianne Farhat, the co-executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, a group that supports progressive candidates in the state, said “calls to abolish ICE are going to be top of mind for any voter and it’s impossible for it not to be.”

Omar’s deeply Democratic district includes Minneapolis, which was at the center of Trump’s immigration enforcement operation. She said her push to abolish the agency aligns with her constituents and “I feel comfortable in that call.”

The rest of Minnesota’s Democratic delegation in Congress have stopped short of fully embracing calls to abolish ICE, even if most want major changes to the agency.

“We’re always going to have some immigration enforcement in this country and border control,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor, said during a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked if ICE should be abolished.

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota said “we need to rip ICE down to the studs and start over.” DFL Rep. Betty McCollum thinks ICE should be “radically reformed.” Rep. Kelly Morrison wants the agency to be “completely overhauled from top to bottom.”

Current Second District Rep. Angie Craig, who’s running for U.S. Senate and previously said she disagrees with abolishing ICE, thinks “this version of ICE absolutely needs to go away“ in a recent interview.

Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who’s running against Craig for the U.S. Senate and has positioned herself as the more progressive Democratic candidate, has been criticizing Craig for past votes on the Laken Riley Act, which allows law enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants arrested for nonviolent crimes.

But Flanagan also stops short of saying ICE should be abolished. “We absolutely have to rip it apart, start over, and rebuild how immigration enforcement works in this country,” Flanagan said in a statement.

None of the three Democrats running for Craig’s competitive swing seat will say “abolish ICE,” either.

Trump’s immigration surge in the state is deeply unpopular in Minnesota. About two-thirds of Minnesotans view ICE negatively and believe the tactics of federal agents have gone too far, similar to national views on Operation Metro Surge, according to a recent poll from NBC News Decision Desk/KARE 11/Minnesota Star Tribune Poll, powered by SurveyMonkey.

Though “abolish ICE” is showing signs that it could become a progressive litmus test for Democrats, the base may be giving them leeway in how they choose to describe where they stand.

“I have some candidates that are saying ‘abolish,’ others are saying ‘reform,’” said Hassan Martini, executive director of No Dem Left Behind, a group that supports progressive candidates, including Flanagan.

Martini thinks there may be hesitation among Democrats who worry the slogan is reminiscent of “defund the police,” which divided the party in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by a former Minneapolis police officer.

However, Martini thinks the calls are “completely different things.”

“People love their local police in certain communities, while in others, they’ve been terrorized by them,” Martini said. “But in the situation of ICE, everyone’s been terrorized. There’s no protection there.”

“I got tagged with abolishing the police during George Floyd, a lot of us did, and we had nothing to do with it,” McCollum said.

But when it comes to abolishing ICE, McCollum thinks Democrats have more flexibility in describing how they want to rein the agency in.

“That’s fine if that’s their choice of describing what they think needs to happen,” McCollum said of other Democrats. “I describe it differently in what I’d like to see happen.”

Some Republicans in competitive races have avoided talking about the enforcement actions in Minnesota or have criticized the tactics used by the Trump administration.

But even as they tread carefully on the broader issue, some are already talking about the “abolish” push as going too far.