Stop the Destruction
We Must Protect Each Other by Abolishing ICE
By Evelyn Rangel-Medina
Citizenism assigns rights and belonging based on immigration status and citizenship. This arbitrary division is enforced by the Department of Homeland Security. Yet the lives of citizens and migrants are inextricably intertwined.
The public execution of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection and the fatal shooting of Renée Macklin Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement highlight this connection. Their deaths are part of a clear pattern of state violence that includes the torture of Anastasio Hernández Rojas. In 2010, he was arrested, electrocuted, beaten, and pinned to the ground by twelve CBP agents while he begged for mercy. Like hundreds of others, the deaths of Alex, Renée, and Anastasio resulted from unchecked power exercised by DHS in operating ICE and CBP.
DHS is now the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Since the George W. Bush administration, Congress has invested billions into DHS with little oversight and near-total impunity. This funding has continued annually, even with clear evidence that racial profiling is a central immigration enforcement tactic. The Supreme Court recently strengthened DHS’s authority by reducing the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable seizures for both citizens and noncitizens. In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, Justice Brett Kavanaugh sanctioned DHS’s authority to racially profile Latines during the military-style occupation of Los Angeles, despite Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s warning: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”
But racial profiling is designed into citizenism and immigration enforcement. Citizens and non-citizens of all races, like Alex, Renée, and Anastacio, face deadly consequences. While President Trump bears significant responsibility, Democrats and Republicans have invested billions of tax dollars and their political future in DHS. President Barack Obama built the largest deportation apparatus in U.S. history without accountability, facilitating the conditions that allowed Anastacio’s death to go unpunished. President Donald Trump revived the 1950s Operation Wetback, a military-style initiative that deported hundreds of thousands of people, including U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. That same logic now extends immigration enforcement across the country, ultimately leading to Alex’s and Renée’s deaths.
The reckless expansion of DHS by Democrats and Republicans extends beyond border regions, migrant communities, and Latine neighborhoods. U.S. citizens of all racial groups are finally seeing firsthand decades of abuse under ICE and CBP that citizenism makes legally, socially, and politically acceptable. The federal government is pouring billions into DHS, sacrificing our collective humanity and safety. In doing so, we have enabled a fascist administration that is killing citizens and non-citizens alike, with devastating consequences for families and communities.
What makes this moment distinct, however, is resistance. The Minneapolis model – marked by sustained protest, refusal to comply with unconstitutional federal mandates, and collective disruption – demonstrates that state violence is stoppable. When communities withdraw their consent and organize to protect one another, the legitimacy of state violence weakens. Only we can stop this destruction, but we must act now. Our future depends on it.
First, cities and states must immediately end collaboration with DHS. This includes terminating 287(g) agreements that allow ICE to deputize local law enforcement to carry out immigration enforcement, as Maryland did earlier this year. This can also include prohibiting ICE from using city- or state-owned property for its operations, as Chicago’s mayor did last year. Second, Congress must commit to stopping funding for ICE and eliminating racialized enforcement. Third, ICE must ultimately be abolished. Its origins, tactics, and lack of accountability are impermissibly violent.
Finally, this moment demands economic resistance. When appeals to human rights fail to halt state violence, coordinated boycotts, strikes, and other forms of collective economic action become powerful tools for change. When economic activity is disrupted, power can shift, and transformative change becomes possible. But we must act now.
For Anastacio, Alex, Renée, and their families, justice may be out of reach. But for millions of citizens and immigrants in this country, it remains within reach. No one is safe in a system that normalizes state violence to sustain an arbitrary division among deeply interdependent people. Our lives depend on the actions we take now.
Evelyn Rangel-Medina is an Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law and Fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law & Equality at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
100% agreed! ICE must be abolished. It is a white supremacist institution infiltrated by white supremacists and now enjoys a largely unlimited purse. It is irredemable and unreformable. But abolition cannot stop there. Recall that it was members of CBP and the Border Patrol who murdered Anastasio. Not ICE. This is a problem endemic to the entire Department of Homeland "Security" structure, itself built on the rotten and racist foundations of the US Border Patrol, and which isn't keeping most of us secure at all. Never has. If we're going to talk about abolition, it cannot be a single agency. The entire framework that houses that agency is to blame for the cruelty of our immigration system. If we tinker with only one aspect of it, as democrats have been doing for the last 40 years, we'll find ourselves right back here again.