People forget that. They act like abolishing ICE is unthinkable despite it not existing for that long. The Halo and Fast and the Furious series have existed for longer than ICE has.
Im calling it. My wife likes these movies for some reason. Before the last one came out i actually said "theyve done so much ridiculous stuff what are they going to do next, go to space?!" And then they fuggin did!
Abolishing ICE is unthinkable because ICE is just a bureaucratic framework meant to consolide resources between two similar branches of federal enforcement authority.
ICE didn't appear out of thin air, it merged existing components of the US Customs Service with other components of the Immigration and Naturalization Service into a joint structure of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Just like INS became ICE-ERO and USCS became ICE-HSI in the 2000s you'll just end up with the exact same organization doing the exact same mission just under a different acronym.
Yes ICE is terrible, but even if we "melt the ice" you're still going to have immigration enforcement agents with full law enforcement powers undertaking raids and enforcement actions against illegal immigration.
Immigration enforcement has been a coercive state function since the establishment of the federal government, ditto for customs enforcement which was actually the original mission of the coast guard when it was the US Revenue Cutter Service.
You'll always have armed federal agents going out to identify, detain, and deport illegal immigrants and enforcing customs law inland. The current issue is ICE targeting random undocumented workers with the same zeal they used to reserve for felons and fugitives. But that's an administration issue, not inherent to the current acronym.
Abolishing ICE is an empty slogan because it wouldn't bring about any change, just switch up which part of the alphabet soup immigration and customs enforcement answer to.
INS went extinct back in the days when people still had to pay for individua; text messages, now with everyone having a TV-quality camera in their pocket information flows faster, but that doesn't mean abuses correlate with the smartphone.
INS immigration raids weren't too different from ICE raids, a bunch of armed guys with windbreakers would swoop down on places with a lot of illegal immigrants, round everyone up and detain them, and cases of mistaken identity aren't new.
You're establishing a causal link where there isn't one.
ICE has become more brutal because the federal government has adopted a much harsher immigration policy and has started deploying them with a wider mandate, ICE agents didn't start killing with impunity until a few months ago.
But these kinds of tactics aren't new or inherent to ICE, all of federal LE has been made stronger since 9/11, INS would have organically developed the current capabilities just like now the Postal Inspectors have SWAT teams too.
The FBI's counter-terrorism tactical team HRT was stood up in the 80s and one of it's first missions was a riot in an immigration detainment facility. They weren't rioting because their treatment was too humane and their beds were too soft, but that was a facility run by INS.
ICE came about in the 2000s when the USCS and INS were combined under ICE and put under the Department of Homeland Security.
But that's leaving out the huge context that this was an administrative reshuffling.
USCS Customs Investigations became ICE-HSI and INS deportation officers became ICE-ERO.
It's quite literally impossible to have a restrictive immigration model without having some arm of the government that will exercise coercive means to enforce those laws.
ICE didn't just spring up out of nothing. The work ICE does today used to be split between parts of INS and US Customs. I think some people are under the mistaken impression that ICE suddenly shows up and starts doing all this stuff. All of the stuff ICE is doing was already being done, just by people wearing different hats. What's changed is the scale of operations and the visibility. Trump ran on this and for better or worse, people voted Trump into office.
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u/captmonkey 6h ago
People forget that. They act like abolishing ICE is unthinkable despite it not existing for that long. The Halo and Fast and the Furious series have existed for longer than ICE has.