More and more Democrats want to close the curtain on America’s top immigration enforcement agency, but very few are articulating what would come next.
Once considered a fringe position, an unprecedented number of Democrats in Washington, D.C., and across the country are now openly calling for the complete dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with much of their shifting sentiment being driven by the Trump administration’s hardline agenda on illegal immigration. Calls for abolishing ICE skyrocketed among liberal lawmakers after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti earlier in January.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to nearly 20 elected Democrats who’ve publicly called for the agency to be done away with, asking what they mean specifically and if they still wish to see criminal illegal migrants removed from the United States. As of publication, only two offices responded back with answers.
“We need a system that promotes the safety and respect of all individuals in the United States. To this point, Congress has failed to create such a system or hold DHS [Department of Homeland Security] officers accountable,” Mike Shanahan, a spokesman for New Jersey Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, told the DCNF.
‘Violent Criminals’
In January, Watson Coleman took to social media to declare that ICE is “not reformable” and that the agency “must be dismantled.” Her office did stipulate that she still would like immigration law enforced, but suggested arresting individuals solely for unlawful status was too much.
“We should prioritize the prosecution and/or removal of violent criminals but sadly this has not been the priority of ICE under the direction of Secretary Noem and Deputy Chief of Staff Miller,” Shanahan told the DCNF. “The promotion of quotas for arrests has instead incentivized ICE agents, many of whom lack adequate vetting or training, to go after people whose only offense is unlawful entry or overstay of a visa.”
Watson Coleman has long voiced support for sanctuary cities and was critical of ICE activity under the Biden administration. In the very beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, she voted against the Laken Riley Act.
Two of Watson Coleman’s New Jersey colleagues, Democrat Reps. Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver, hosted a virtual town hall with her earlier in February where ICE was called to be abolished. Neither lawmaker responded to requests for comment.
Democrats working hundreds of miles away from Capitol Hill have also called for the country’s main immigration enforcement agency to be erased.
Reacting to the deadly shootings of Good and Pretti involving federal agents, both Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker threw support behind ending ICE. Pritzker declared on X that it was “time to abolish Trump’s ICE” and Johnson similarly stated that “ICE must be abolished.”
While not providing a statement, a staffer for Pritzker did refer the DCNF to several previous comments by the governor that suggested he was in favor of reforming the agency, not total abolishment. Pritzker had opposed tough immigration enforcement before the recent shootings, having signed sanctuary legislation in December that makes it harder for ICE agents to nab illegal migrants in the state.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for clarification.
While many lawmakers have just recently begun adopting such rhetoric, the abolish ICE movement has been a cause célèbre long championed by a select few Democrats.
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for abolishing the agency since first running for Congress in 2018 and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar vowed to fight to end the agency in her 2018 victory speech. Neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Omar responded to requests for comment.
Democrat Reps. Robert Garcia and Ro Khanna of California, Delia Ramirez and Robin Kelly of Illinois, Seth Moulton and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Pramila Jayapal of Washington State and Dan Goldman are among the other congressional lawmakers who have publicly supported abolishing ICE who did not respond to requests for clarification.
‘A Modern Creation’
Formally established in 2003, ICE was formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that killed roughly 3,000 Americans. Concluding that there were major inadequacies in communication and collaboration between federal law enforcement agencies, the Bush administration and lawmakers pushed through the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which established DHS and its sub-agencies.
The move was incredibly popular with both parties at the time, with the legislation receiving overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress.
A popular strategy from abolish ICE advocates is to point to the agency’s relatively young existence, as it’s only been in official operation for slightly over 20 years. However, interior immigration enforcement did not begin with the creation of ICE.
For decades, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was the federal agency tasked with arresting and deporting illegal migrants living throughout the U.S. After passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, INS’s job roles were inherited into the newly-formed Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and ICE.
“You know, immigration existed long before ICE,” New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed socialist, said during a January interview with ABC News. “ICE is a modern creation. I’m older than ICE.” When pressed by host Jonathan Karl that there’s always been an agency enforcing immigration law, Mamdani countered that he would “separate ICE from an organization that looks to enforce these rules.”
His office did not respond to a DCNF request for clarification.
There’s never been a time in modern American history where interior immigration enforcement abruptly ended, making it difficult to predict what consequences would follow. However, past actions could shed at least some light on what the result would look like.
On former President Joe Biden’s very first day in office, his administration issued an order establishing a 100-day moratorium on nearly all deportations. The action was part of an overarching strategy by the Biden White House to dismantle the immigration enforcement apparatus built under Trump’s first administration.
That 100-day moratorium order was ultimately blocked in court, but the Biden administration’s desire to grind repatriations to a screeching halt was largely realized. ICE deportations dropped to around 59,000 in fiscal year 2021, the lowest in the agency’s history. For context, DHS declared in January that it executed more than 675,000 deportations throughout 2025.
While not literally scrapping the agency, critics of Biden’s immigration policies said his actions “effectively abolished ICE‘ during his first year in office. What came next were unprecedented levels of illegal immigration.
Fiscal year 2024 was the second worst year in history for illegal immigration, with nearly three million inadmissible encounters taking place, a number only surpassed by the record level experienced the prior year. The level of net migration into the U.S. under Biden was the largest in the country’s history, which included well over eight million encounters along the southern border throughout his presidency.
The sheer level of the crisis pushed Americans into categorizing illegal immigration as one of the most pressing issues in the country and drove voters to return Trump to the White House. However, after a year of sweeping crackdowns and the deaths of Good and Petti, a vibe shift is once again setting over many Americans, with recent polls indicating that voters are souring on hardline immigration policies.
Democratic leadership, in the meantime, has continued to keep its distance from the abolish ICE movement.
“The only time I hear that [abolish ICE] is actually from my Republican colleagues,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, the third-ranking House Democrat, told the DCNF as recently as December. “I haven’t heard any Democrats calling for defunding law enforcement agencies.”
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