"But let’s be clear that advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States."
I completely disagree with this assertion. ICE has only existed since 2003 (before then, enforcement was provided by INS), and eliminating it as an agency doesn't mean that immigration enforcement would disappear -- it means that we would rethink our approach entirely. We can abolish ICE and move the functions that are actually worth serving elsewhere.
As it is, it will be nearly impossible to re-envision ICE without abolishing it and starting from scratch, because its culture has been poisoned from top to bottom. Better to start over with new leadership, a new mission, a new culture, and new guardrails.
You are forgetting the fact that the average American, voters, would hear the Republicans squealing “The Democrats don’t care about the criminals!” Think in terms of selling changes to ICE vs. getting rid of it. Jake is right: reform and retrain is the politically and structurally way to go. Reeps are far better at selling angst than Dems. We wouldn’t have a chance against their message machine.
The Republicans will say Dems want open borders and don’t care about crime no matter what we do, they’ve been doing that for years. We have been governing and speaking with what republicans will say for years, which is part of the reason we are in this mess. Fuck what republicans will say. We (the Dems) need to do what’s best for the people in this country. We need to speak up for what is right. Fuck the consultants, and the Republicans. The Republicans don’t respect us because we are afraid of our own shadow. Many democrats are in a complete rage (including me) at our party. And, from the spinelessness I see, it’s well deserved. We have a little bit of power, we need to use it for good. Like not finding ICE who’s turning our cities into war zones. People are being hurt and killed. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ‼️
Brilliant reply! I'm with you, all the way. Fuck Schumer and Jeffries. I just hope the midterms yield some young, fire-eating soldier-Dems who will charge ahead instead of always responding. We have to control the tempo and control the narrative. Otherwise we'll always be on the back foot.
I think there are many valid points here. Look at the number of illegal immigrants deported during Obama and Republicans still say borders were “open”. That may not ever change.
I think we can agree that a “do over”’is sorely needed. And the name ICE has become synonymous with a state police force so that may be a tough one also. The main thing is to defund what is going on now and bring it to a screeching halt.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security. Its stated mission is to conduct criminal investigations, enforce immigration laws, preserve national security, and protect public safety. ICE was created as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 following the September 11 attacks. It absorbed the prior functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the United States Customs Service.
I live in Massachusetts and you are one of my reps. Please convince all Democrats not to fund this lawless and criminal agency. They are literally killing and maiming American citizens. They have no respect for human rights. Please do whatever you can to abolish ICE. Thank you
You had me with your first statement on voting no more funding for ICE in
the appropriation bills the end of this month.
Then you lost me. An agency built on divisiveness and hatred of the other cannot and will not be reformed, nor can it be retrained into normalcy. That is wishful thinking.
We need to reform our broken immigration system. Unfortunately, Democrats back to Clinton have been part of breaking the system, weakening it, making it harder, if not impossible for people who have been working here for decades, for law abiding TPS and DACA recipients to attain citizenship.
ICE , a brutal Paramilitary is NOT the answer to fixing a dysfunctional immigration system
Thank you Representative Auchincloss for being a no. Seems like an absolute no brainer to not support military in the streets of US cities, where they’re attacking and killing people. I hope you are also talking to your colleagues on both sides of the isle to lobby them to be a ‘no’ as well. As far as I know, Hakeem Jeffries said he was a ‘no’ but wouldn’t bother to whip votes to also be no’s. Please talk to him. He’s not reading the room. Democrats are in a rage at Dem leadership and if he supports the funding of ICE in our streets, I think that will be the final draw. I currently live in MA, but am a born and raised Manhattanite NY. I called Jeffries office and screamed on the voicemail. Please do EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO NOT FUND ICE…..Shut down the government….whatever it takes. Thank you.
If/when the Dems win in November, the first thing you do is cut ICE funding by 50% - lower than it was. Then start filing lawsuits against agents accused of crimes.
The only thing the GOP respects is strength and money - so do both !!
Amen Jake -- hope you fellow Democrats will get behind your solid plans -- defunding ICE rather than Reform and Retrain is crazy (like defund the police was!). Hope more of the plans that you have outlined on housing, the internet, energy, health care and education also come to the forefront -- not the least of which is turning the hollow "Save Democracy" focused message into saving the three Freedoms to…... Keep up the great work Jake!
The most urgent essentials IMO are to get rid of "Kavanaugh stops" and warrantless fishing expeditions. No profiling people based on their appearance or accent, no stopping US citizens to demand proof of their citizenship, and no raids of any home or business or gathering place without judicial warrants. If we can do that without abolishing ICE, fine. But I fear that "reform and retrain" will turn into something way too incremental to safeguard our Fourth Amendment rights.
This response reflects the core problem with much of establishment Democratic thinking: a rigid either/or framework that shuts down creative, durable solutions before they’re even explored.
“Abolish ICE” does not mean abandoning immigration enforcement. It means acknowledging that ICE has lost public legitimacy so completely that reform from within is no longer credible. When an institution becomes structurally abusive — not episodically, but systematically — demolition and replacement is sometimes the most responsible path forward. That’s not radicalism; it’s accountability.
We’ve already seen this pattern. Policing reforms that failed for decades suddenly became meaningful only when cities dismantled entire departments and rebuilt them under new governance models. Immigration enforcement now sits at a similar inflection point. Pretending that retraining alone can solve an institution that has been operationally weaponized, legally evasive, and culturally insulated from accountability misunderstands the depth of the crisis.
More fundamentally, ICE is embedded in an immigration system that is itself broken beyond repair — morally, operationally, and politically. Corporate Democrats have had decades to fix it and haven’t. That failure is not ideological; it’s structural. Replacing ICE is not about lawlessness. It’s about building an enforcement system that actually aligns with constitutional values, human dignity, and public trust — something the current agency demonstrably cannot do.
The real false choice isn’t abolition versus enforcement. It’s preservation versus transformation. And at this point, transformation requires replacement.
Completely agree with Kelly's comment. "Abolish ICE" doesn't mean no enforcement. And, ICE is unreformable and has lost public legitimacy.
True forward-thinking vision would say we need *real* immigration enforcement rather than a police state. After 9/11, agencies were renamed and reorganized - this is worse and the same needs to happen.
All of the action items are great. But they can't be implemented successfully without an entirely new organization.
This make the absolute most sense of everything I have read. Rep Auchincloss if you vote yes on this very critical continued funding of ICE, I will be rethinking my choice for representative this coming fall
It's just not true that abolishing ICE is advocating for stopping enforcement of immigration laws in the interior of the US. Are you saying the laws were not enforced at all prior to ICE's establishment after 9/11/2001? I think the entire Department of Homeland Security should go. Repeal the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Give immigration back to the Justice Department. Let local police enforce criminal law. As a country, we made many mistakes in the aftermath of 9/11. A big one, in my opinion, was to militarize federal law enforcement, which is precisely why we now have a paramilitary goon squad acting at the behest of our president.
PS You claim to be supporting Noem's impeachment. How? I don't see you cosponsoring HRes 966- why not?
I agree with you about many things, Jake, but I have to disagree about the basic premise of this post: don't say abolish ICE.
ICE as it currently exists is designed and authorized to exercise cruelty and violence, and terrorize American citizens into silence. The majority of people this administration has sought and chosen to hire *want* to hurt people. I suspect the majority of these ICE agents are untrainable because they are dedicated to white supremacist ideology. As is clear to anyone who has seen the video shot by the shooter, some will even kill without reason or compunction.
I suggest abolishing this ICE that exists under DHS, return it to its former Immigration and Naturalization Services home, and start hiring and training as they had been during that time. And Congress needs to write and pass immigration reform legislation with a veto-proof bipartisan vote. It's a national shame and embarrassment that this probably can't happen until the Democrats have Congressional majorities and the White House, but maybe new Democratic Congressional leadership now would help convince enough Republicans to grow a spine and a conscience to make this happen sooner.
ICE needs to be dismantled. Now let’s get all the dems on the SAME page and vote no. Also, the government needs to be shut down. Should have been shut down when the opportunity presented itself last year. No salary for Noem and all the others. I refuse to help fund this crap. And lets continually impeach these guys even if it doesn’t do anything-gotta show you all are trying.
I am so disappointed in you Congressman Auchincloss. I called your office and asked for an appointment to come and speak with you and never got a response. I have never had a politician reject an appointment request. To me, it means that you don't care about anyone's problem, just your own. I will never vote for you again.
As a constituent, I ask that you vote to withhold funding for federal spending that funds the dangerous practices of ICE. My concern is treatment in detention centers and toward civil protests.
Jake - ideas are great, but NOTHING will change unless you can convince your Republican colleagues to see that they are blindly supporting a mentally unhinged, narcissistic president who only cares to line his own pockets with ill-gotten gains. How are you and other Dems working to help these colleagues understand that they can get out from under the tyranny of this kakistocracy by simply saying no to the evil that is happening every day? Your plans mean nothing if you cannot get Republican colleagues to understand that voting against Trump's wishes will make him melt like the wicked witch of the west. He is toothless. Do they really think it is OK to take money from Venezuela and put it in Qatar rather than the US Treasury? And murder American citizens in Minneapolis? Please let us know the efforts that you and your Democratic colleagues are making to create a Congress that will allow your good ideas to flourish.
"But let’s be clear that advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States."
I completely disagree with this assertion. ICE has only existed since 2003 (before then, enforcement was provided by INS), and eliminating it as an agency doesn't mean that immigration enforcement would disappear -- it means that we would rethink our approach entirely. We can abolish ICE and move the functions that are actually worth serving elsewhere.
As it is, it will be nearly impossible to re-envision ICE without abolishing it and starting from scratch, because its culture has been poisoned from top to bottom. Better to start over with new leadership, a new mission, a new culture, and new guardrails.
You are forgetting the fact that the average American, voters, would hear the Republicans squealing “The Democrats don’t care about the criminals!” Think in terms of selling changes to ICE vs. getting rid of it. Jake is right: reform and retrain is the politically and structurally way to go. Reeps are far better at selling angst than Dems. We wouldn’t have a chance against their message machine.
The Republicans will say Dems want open borders and don’t care about crime no matter what we do, they’ve been doing that for years. We have been governing and speaking with what republicans will say for years, which is part of the reason we are in this mess. Fuck what republicans will say. We (the Dems) need to do what’s best for the people in this country. We need to speak up for what is right. Fuck the consultants, and the Republicans. The Republicans don’t respect us because we are afraid of our own shadow. Many democrats are in a complete rage (including me) at our party. And, from the spinelessness I see, it’s well deserved. We have a little bit of power, we need to use it for good. Like not finding ICE who’s turning our cities into war zones. People are being hurt and killed. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ‼️
Brilliant reply! I'm with you, all the way. Fuck Schumer and Jeffries. I just hope the midterms yield some young, fire-eating soldier-Dems who will charge ahead instead of always responding. We have to control the tempo and control the narrative. Otherwise we'll always be on the back foot.
I think there are many valid points here. Look at the number of illegal immigrants deported during Obama and Republicans still say borders were “open”. That may not ever change.
I think we can agree that a “do over”’is sorely needed. And the name ICE has become synonymous with a state police force so that may be a tough one also. The main thing is to defund what is going on now and bring it to a screeching halt.
Completely agree:
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security. Its stated mission is to conduct criminal investigations, enforce immigration laws, preserve national security, and protect public safety. ICE was created as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 following the September 11 attacks. It absorbed the prior functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the United States Customs Service.
-Wikipedia
Jake was in the Marines and knows about proper use of force. This common sense approach to reform and retrain ICE makes perfect sense.
I live in Massachusetts and you are one of my reps. Please convince all Democrats not to fund this lawless and criminal agency. They are literally killing and maiming American citizens. They have no respect for human rights. Please do whatever you can to abolish ICE. Thank you
You had me with your first statement on voting no more funding for ICE in
the appropriation bills the end of this month.
Then you lost me. An agency built on divisiveness and hatred of the other cannot and will not be reformed, nor can it be retrained into normalcy. That is wishful thinking.
We need to reform our broken immigration system. Unfortunately, Democrats back to Clinton have been part of breaking the system, weakening it, making it harder, if not impossible for people who have been working here for decades, for law abiding TPS and DACA recipients to attain citizenship.
ICE , a brutal Paramilitary is NOT the answer to fixing a dysfunctional immigration system
Thank you Representative Auchincloss for being a no. Seems like an absolute no brainer to not support military in the streets of US cities, where they’re attacking and killing people. I hope you are also talking to your colleagues on both sides of the isle to lobby them to be a ‘no’ as well. As far as I know, Hakeem Jeffries said he was a ‘no’ but wouldn’t bother to whip votes to also be no’s. Please talk to him. He’s not reading the room. Democrats are in a rage at Dem leadership and if he supports the funding of ICE in our streets, I think that will be the final draw. I currently live in MA, but am a born and raised Manhattanite NY. I called Jeffries office and screamed on the voicemail. Please do EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO NOT FUND ICE…..Shut down the government….whatever it takes. Thank you.
If/when the Dems win in November, the first thing you do is cut ICE funding by 50% - lower than it was. Then start filing lawsuits against agents accused of crimes.
The only thing the GOP respects is strength and money - so do both !!
I agree.
Amen Jake -- hope you fellow Democrats will get behind your solid plans -- defunding ICE rather than Reform and Retrain is crazy (like defund the police was!). Hope more of the plans that you have outlined on housing, the internet, energy, health care and education also come to the forefront -- not the least of which is turning the hollow "Save Democracy" focused message into saving the three Freedoms to…... Keep up the great work Jake!
The most urgent essentials IMO are to get rid of "Kavanaugh stops" and warrantless fishing expeditions. No profiling people based on their appearance or accent, no stopping US citizens to demand proof of their citizenship, and no raids of any home or business or gathering place without judicial warrants. If we can do that without abolishing ICE, fine. But I fear that "reform and retrain" will turn into something way too incremental to safeguard our Fourth Amendment rights.
This response reflects the core problem with much of establishment Democratic thinking: a rigid either/or framework that shuts down creative, durable solutions before they’re even explored.
“Abolish ICE” does not mean abandoning immigration enforcement. It means acknowledging that ICE has lost public legitimacy so completely that reform from within is no longer credible. When an institution becomes structurally abusive — not episodically, but systematically — demolition and replacement is sometimes the most responsible path forward. That’s not radicalism; it’s accountability.
We’ve already seen this pattern. Policing reforms that failed for decades suddenly became meaningful only when cities dismantled entire departments and rebuilt them under new governance models. Immigration enforcement now sits at a similar inflection point. Pretending that retraining alone can solve an institution that has been operationally weaponized, legally evasive, and culturally insulated from accountability misunderstands the depth of the crisis.
More fundamentally, ICE is embedded in an immigration system that is itself broken beyond repair — morally, operationally, and politically. Corporate Democrats have had decades to fix it and haven’t. That failure is not ideological; it’s structural. Replacing ICE is not about lawlessness. It’s about building an enforcement system that actually aligns with constitutional values, human dignity, and public trust — something the current agency demonstrably cannot do.
The real false choice isn’t abolition versus enforcement. It’s preservation versus transformation. And at this point, transformation requires replacement.
Completely agree with Kelly's comment. "Abolish ICE" doesn't mean no enforcement. And, ICE is unreformable and has lost public legitimacy.
True forward-thinking vision would say we need *real* immigration enforcement rather than a police state. After 9/11, agencies were renamed and reorganized - this is worse and the same needs to happen.
All of the action items are great. But they can't be implemented successfully without an entirely new organization.
This make the absolute most sense of everything I have read. Rep Auchincloss if you vote yes on this very critical continued funding of ICE, I will be rethinking my choice for representative this coming fall
It's just not true that abolishing ICE is advocating for stopping enforcement of immigration laws in the interior of the US. Are you saying the laws were not enforced at all prior to ICE's establishment after 9/11/2001? I think the entire Department of Homeland Security should go. Repeal the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Give immigration back to the Justice Department. Let local police enforce criminal law. As a country, we made many mistakes in the aftermath of 9/11. A big one, in my opinion, was to militarize federal law enforcement, which is precisely why we now have a paramilitary goon squad acting at the behest of our president.
PS You claim to be supporting Noem's impeachment. How? I don't see you cosponsoring HRes 966- why not?
I agree with you about many things, Jake, but I have to disagree about the basic premise of this post: don't say abolish ICE.
ICE as it currently exists is designed and authorized to exercise cruelty and violence, and terrorize American citizens into silence. The majority of people this administration has sought and chosen to hire *want* to hurt people. I suspect the majority of these ICE agents are untrainable because they are dedicated to white supremacist ideology. As is clear to anyone who has seen the video shot by the shooter, some will even kill without reason or compunction.
I suggest abolishing this ICE that exists under DHS, return it to its former Immigration and Naturalization Services home, and start hiring and training as they had been during that time. And Congress needs to write and pass immigration reform legislation with a veto-proof bipartisan vote. It's a national shame and embarrassment that this probably can't happen until the Democrats have Congressional majorities and the White House, but maybe new Democratic Congressional leadership now would help convince enough Republicans to grow a spine and a conscience to make this happen sooner.
ICE needs to be dismantled. Now let’s get all the dems on the SAME page and vote no. Also, the government needs to be shut down. Should have been shut down when the opportunity presented itself last year. No salary for Noem and all the others. I refuse to help fund this crap. And lets continually impeach these guys even if it doesn’t do anything-gotta show you all are trying.
I am so disappointed in you Congressman Auchincloss. I called your office and asked for an appointment to come and speak with you and never got a response. I have never had a politician reject an appointment request. To me, it means that you don't care about anyone's problem, just your own. I will never vote for you again.
As a constituent, I ask that you vote to withhold funding for federal spending that funds the dangerous practices of ICE. My concern is treatment in detention centers and toward civil protests.
No masks and no GUNS.
Jake - ideas are great, but NOTHING will change unless you can convince your Republican colleagues to see that they are blindly supporting a mentally unhinged, narcissistic president who only cares to line his own pockets with ill-gotten gains. How are you and other Dems working to help these colleagues understand that they can get out from under the tyranny of this kakistocracy by simply saying no to the evil that is happening every day? Your plans mean nothing if you cannot get Republican colleagues to understand that voting against Trump's wishes will make him melt like the wicked witch of the west. He is toothless. Do they really think it is OK to take money from Venezuela and put it in Qatar rather than the US Treasury? And murder American citizens in Minneapolis? Please let us know the efforts that you and your Democratic colleagues are making to create a Congress that will allow your good ideas to flourish.