The Demand Will Always Be Abolition: On Ending ICE and Borders

Communities across the country are experiencing deep terror at the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Created under the 2002 Homeland Security Act, ICE’s stated mission is to preserve national security by enforcing immigration law. In practice, this enforcement has meant surveillance, detention, deportation, and the violent separation of families and communities.

Since its inception in 2003, federal investments in ICE and the broader immigration enforcement apparatus have surpassed $400 billion. Administrations on both sides of the political aisle have fueled this expansion. In 2013, former President Obama spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement, in March 2024, former President Biden signed a spending bill which provided a spike in funding to immigration enforcement, and most recently, the current administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided a dramatic new infusion of funds to ICE. ICE is now the most funded law enforcement agency within the United States, with $85 billion in funding. 

These continued investments in ICE inevitably lead to continued surveillance, separation, and trauma for communities. Migrants and migrant justice organizers have long called for the abolition of ICE, recognizing how the agency’s existence all but ensures that communities will experience state violence. What many are witnessing now–in plain view–is the fallout of repeatedly refusing to meet that demand.

Recently, all eyes have been on Minneapolis, Minnesota where, since December, thousands of federal immigration agents have been deployed in what the federal government is calling the largest immigration operation ever. Fear and tension has soared in Minnesota as federal agents terrorize, arrest, and detain both migrants and U.S. citizens. Tensions continued to rise when Renee Good was murdered by a federal agent on video. On January 24th, federal agents murdered another community member, Alex Pretti, also recorded on video. These murders and violent arrests have occurred as images of children, parents, and other community members being separated and detained continue to circulate. 

As public scrutiny has intensified, the federal government has moved to suppress documentation of this violence, with the arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort. And, while all eyes have been on Minneapolis, the terror unleashed by ICE is being felt across the country. Reports of increased ICE activities have surfaced in Memphis; in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve Keith Porter Jr. was murdered by an off duty ICE agent; and the death of a Cuban migrant in an ICE facility in Texas has now been ruled a homicide.

ICE must be abolished, and its abolition is possible. The agency is younger than many of us; most of us have lived during a time when ICE has not existed. The demand for abolition rests on the understanding that institutions of state terror are also death-making institutions.

They facilitate social death by severing families and communities, increase precarity and fear, and, at their most extreme, kill our neighbors, our loved ones, and our friends. Calls for abolition are often quelled by propositions for reform. Already, elected officials have said that rather than abolishing ICE we can ensure that agents have better training, wear body cameras, and be prohibited from wearing masks. These arguments are familiar to anyone who has followed the long history of police reform in this country. Procedural reforms have never stopped state violence against poor Black communities, and they will not stop violence against communities now. Reform stabilizes harmful systems, it does not transform them.

We must continue to demand the abolition of all state agencies and the functionalities that wreak havoc on poor communities of color. The criminalization of immigration must end. We fight for abolition and the end of family separation because we know that state violence is not inevitable. A world governed by borders and policing is not natural; these are man made systems designed to uphold colonialism and racial capitalism. Because they were created, they can be dismantled. It has been deeply encouraging to see people in Minneapolis, and across the country, refuse to back down from their demands or abandon their community members. These acts of resistance remind us that another world is possible and many of us long for something better. 

At upEND, we have been in conversation with organizers about the intersections between ending the family policing system and dismantling borders. We recently spoke with Silky Shah, Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, about what it will take to end immigrant detention. Listen to that conversation to learn more. For those looking to deepen their understanding of borders and immigrant justice, Haymarket Books is offering free ebooks of some of our favorite books like Border and Rule and Unbuild Walls. And for those who want to provide direct support to communities in Minnesota, consider checking out this list of local organizations you can support.