Support, Obey and Defend
To protect the Constitution and preserve the Republic, Democrats must unite around abolishing ICE.
On Monday night, I placed a hand on my First Communion Bible and swore an oath to “support, obey, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Less than 48 hours after getting sworn in for my second term as a Township Supervisor, I would see a video of Renee Good being gunned down by an ICE agent on the snowy streets of Minneapolis. The ICE agent, attempting to detain a citizen without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, fired two shots through her head despite video showing that her moving vehicle posed minimal threat to his safety. What I saw in that video was a gruesome act of state violence and a disgrace to the rights enshrined in the Constitution. The flagrant lies spouted by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about the victim and the altercation, followed by J.D. Vance’s insidious assertion that the officer enjoyed “absolute immunity” for the killing, contradicted all the principles of justice taught to me from the Bible. I could not hold my hand up to God and swear to protect the United States Constitution without coming to an undeniable conclusion: Abolish ICE.
Abolishing ICE is easier said than done if you are just a local official like me who is outnumbered by Republicans on my Township’s Board of Supervisors. Even the mayors of America’s largest cities with direct supervisory authority over the PD have only so much power to stop ICE operations within their jurisdiction. As engaging as it might be to watch Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey step up to the mic and tell ICE to “Get the fuck out of Minnesota,” the harsh reality is that he is asking rather than telling these federal agents to leave his city.
To make matters worse, as long as ICE enjoys the authority that comes with being a “law enforcement” agency, local officials from big city mayors to small township supervisors are vulnerable to the charge of endangering rather than protecting public safety when they critique ICE operations. The murky overlap between local law enforcement and ICE’s special jurisdiction over undocumented immigrants provides cover for the homicidal abuse of power we saw in Minneapolis while blurring the line in the eyes of the public between trained and unionized local police and recklessly untrained new federal hires. Growing anger toward ICE will likely create disorder that puts our legitimate local police on the front lines in clashes incited by this illegitimate overreach of federal power. Our EMS and fire services will be strained by dispatch calls responding to ICE-related events. As someone who has spent a sleepless night or two fretting over sad stories of breakdowns in EMS coverage, it was especially upsetting to hear that Renee Good may have died not only from the two bullets shot into her face but also from the inability of paramedics to administer life-saving aid due to federal officials impeding first responder access to the scene. Serving as a first responder is challenging enough even without the turmoil being caused by ICE. But is next to impossible for first responders to come to our aid in a timely fashion while also deciding whether the ICE agents they may work with are properly operating within the bounds of constitutionally legitimate authority granted by the 2003 Homeland Security Act or are serving instead as chaos agents for a vindictive and deranged president. So long as ICE enjoys the authority of being a legitimate “law enforcement” agency, ICE agents will become ever more entangled with our first responder systems. The only way to protect our first responders from the extra strain and risk caused by Trump’s weaponization of federal immigration agents is to revoke the authority created in 2003 and abolish ICE once and for all.
Congress created ICE, and Congress can abolish ICE. Unfortunately, the mainstream Democratic Party has instead focused on merely reforming ICE, thereby reinforcing its reputation as a legitimate law enforcement authority. As long as this reformist rather than abolitionist position remains the party line of the Democrats, significant segments of the population will fall for Trump and MAGA’s strongest argument that it is not ICE itself but disrespect for ICE’s “law enforcement” authority that is leading to the deaths of Americans like Renee Good. If she just obeyed the officer’s orders and respected their authority, Renee Good would be alive today. It’s a seductive argument, especially while most Democrats still affirm ICE’s legitimate authority. Yet those who understand the magnitude of this moment realize the peril of submitting to an authority that is obviously being used to trample on our fundamental freedoms and destabilize our constitutional order. Nathan Hale would have never been hanged if he followed orders and respected the authority of the British Crown over its colonial subjects. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have never been executed if he had not plotted against Adolf Hitler and instead just followed orders and respected the authority of the Third Reich. Martin Luther King would have never been shot if he just kept quiet and respected the authority of Southern states to enact Jim Crow laws. History teaches us that you cannot both effectively resist oppression while affirming the authority of the oppressor. Congressional Democrats who encourage individual citizen resistance to ICE operations without exercising their own power to push for the agency’s abolition are putting innocent lives in danger while inadvertently doing the handiwork of Donald Trump and his apologists.
So why don’t more Democrats want to abolish ICE? Barack Obama and Joe Biden entered office with Democratic control of both the House and Senate. The opportunity was available to abolish ICE if the party wanted to do so. The lack of action to abolish ICE demonstrates the peculiar mixture of arrogance and insecurity that defines our current Democratic Party. Democrats rarely relinquish or abolish constitutionally dubious powers because they smugly believe that they have the superior intelligence, virtue, and professionalism needed to wield those powers more responsibly than Republicans. We saw this tendency play out in the foreign policy arena when Obama expanded drone strikes and authorized the bombing of Libya without Congressional authorization. Such “responsible” use of constitutionally questionable power by Democrats makes it harder to condemn Trump’s flagrant attack on Venezuela. The moral high ground needed to criticize Trump for parading a bound and blindfolded Nicolas Maduro around like a prize buck starts to crumble when we remember Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton giddily chuckling about the brutal killing of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi. Similarly, on the domestic front, there is no doubt that mainstream Democrats are still harboring the delusion that they can reform ICE and make it a more professional and competent agency when they take power. Nevermind the fact that the purging of respected professionals from the DHS and the outright recruitment of white supremacists will result in ICE being an irredeemable personal police force for Trump and Vance by 2028. It takes a potent strain of elite arrogance for Democrats to fail to realize that abolishing ICE is not an act of woke virtue signaling but rather a practical necessity if the Party is ever to regain de facto and not just de jure control over a federal government that has been warped to serve the interests of Donald Trump.
The Democrats’ arrogant belief that they can be responsible caretakers of dangerous state power is tightly entwined with their deep-felt insecurity about being seen as weak by coveted independent and undecided voters. In an effort to appeal to the supposed “law and order” sensibilities of moderate voters, most Democrats will avoid any policy position with the slightest whiff of 2020 Defund-the-Police-Prison-Abolitionist wokeness. This insecure fear of looking soft on crime for the sake of their own personal and professional interests pushes Democratic politicians toward “Republican Lite” positions that actually make them appear much weaker than if they had the guts to stand on principle. Any Democrat who can look at what is happening in Minneapolis right now and not see that ICE is being used as an instrument of lawlessness and disorder does not have the insight or courage to be a leader. In a country where a demented aspiring dictator is undermining the rule of law and weaponizing the executive branch against politically unaligned communities, the true “law and order” position is to abolish ICE.
Escalating violence should make Democrats realize they must renounce the arrogance and insecurity that have allowed ICE to survive under their power in past administrations. In place of arrogance, they must choose humility and admit that ICE has become an entity beyond redemption and reform, even in the hands of the most responsible Democratic administration. In place of insecurity about appearing weak on crime, they must realize that authentic confidence and strength will allow them to explain to all voters that they are safer and more secure in an America without ICE. There is little future for the Democratic Party or maybe even democracy itself unless our leaders can boldly proclaim that the only way to support, obey, and defend our Constitution is through the swift and total abolition of ICE.
In this horrific climate of “might makes right” the simple act of declaring that ICE needs to be abolished will get you prosecuted (and perhaps erased) by ICE and T****’s minions. Criticizing the King will get your head lopped off, Constitution be damned.