How do we create liberal democracy in America? Notice that I say “create,” not “protect.” The old constitutional order is gone, and we should be straightforward about that. Nor do I say “return”; the system was clearly incapable of meeting the challenges of our age. We should not want to go back to the past. The past is what led to the present.
Rather, we need a reconstruction agenda. And we need the entire anti-Trump coalition—from neocons to neo-Stalinists and everyone in between—to be, despite all our differences, fully signed off on it.
This sounds daunting, but internet squabbling shouldn’t make us think it’s impossible. We achieved near-total unanimity that Trump should be impeached, both times. On other “reconstruction” issues, we’re working toward agreement: Supreme Court reform went from a fringe thing in 2020 to something like the majority position now.
It’s becoming obvious that, whatever else is on the reconstruction agenda, ICE abolition must be included. The agency is acting as a secret police force, ideologically loyal to the far right—perhaps even to Trump personally, like a latter-day Praetorian guard. They have, with the assistance of the executive branch and Supreme Court, arrogated to themselves the power to stop and detain any person for any reason. Unless stopped, it’s hardly insane to think that someday they will functionally assert the ability to summarily execute American citizens in broad daylight, on camera, and in front of witnesses.
All this, however chaotic, seems to have been the plan all along. It’s a simple trick when you think about it: During fascism’s ascent, you endlessly insist on more immigration enforcement. More funding, more powers, more agents. Once in power, you then have a pre-made apparatus of violent control outside of the normal checks and balances. One institutionally and culturally set up not to see its victims—those who “aren’t supposed to be here”—as people. You don’t need to set up a secret police to go after dissidents or targeted racial groups; you just expand the definition of “not supposed to be here” to include them. Trump’s DHS recently called for “100 million deportations.” There aren’t anywhere near this many immigrants in America. Rather, it’s around the size of the country’s non-white population.
It is preposterous to imagine we will be able to create liberal democracy in America with the secret police of the current regime still in operation. Their overtly fascist recruitment targets far-right groups for its agents. Those agents very plainly see liberal America as, at best, occupied territory and, at worst, subhuman. The instincts driving ICE are not instrumentally rational. Like the institutional equivalent of a serial killer, they are driven by sadism, male insecurity, and the desire to dominate and humiliate. Like a serial killer, they will not stop until they are stopped.
ICE agents in Michigan explicitly talk of the killing of Renee Nicole Good as a warning to others. They believe they are entitled to absolute obedience, and their only answer to not getting it is violence. Administration officials openly say that accusations of murder will be met with more murders.
And abolition is not enough. There must also be accountability. The crimes of this era cannot go unanswered. Not as a matter of vengeance, or even justice, but of survival. At present, those who commit crimes under a Republican president expect to go unpunished under a future Democratic one. But attempts to enforce the law under a Democratic one will lead to purges when power switches back.
Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome. And these are perverse incentives. Imagine a parent who discovers one of their children has abused another. They respond by saying this behavior is wrong, but do not impose consequences on the perpetrator, instead punishing the victim for trying to speak up. What will be the result? Will the abuse stop, or get worse? This is how many families respond. Our dual legal regime is institutionalizing the same dynamic at a national scale. And the comparison is not a flippant one: This administration is staffed by abusers, they think like abusers, and they justify themselves like abusers.
Democratic DAs need to arrest ICE agents who break the law. Convictions will be difficult to obtain, but at least attempting them is better than giving up in advance. More broadly, every Democrat needs to get behind disbanding and criminal investigations when they retake federal power. My fear is that if they go into government without a clear plan, some half-baked reform will pass—or perhaps nothing at all. And that won’t be enough.
The objection will be electability—that swing voters won’t go for it. Even if there where merit to it, this argument is de facto giving up on freedom in America and the possibility of its citizens leading dignified lives. ICE has to go. If we can’t sell the electorate on that, we’re not getting out of competitive authoritarianism and are likely on the road to worse. You might as well fight.
And I’m just not convinced by this electoral defeatism on its own terms. The received wisdom is that immigration isn’t a “good issue” for Democrats. This is out of date—with the horrific consequences of nativism increasingly on display across the world, I think there’s much more opportunity to counterattack than concerned centrists realize. And the debate about ICE isn’t even really about immigration—we can replace the agency, or send its legitimate functions elsewhere. It’s about whether America should have a secret police. That’s the frame we should fight this in.
In a similar vein, I think many Democrats associate “abolish” with “defund the police” (which I agree isn’t an electoral winner). But they’re just not the same thing. Americans have too much affection for the police as an institution; a consequence of generation after generation of “copaganda” movies and police procedurals. Nothing like that exists for ICE, and there are parakeets older than the agency.
They certainly don’t poll the same: Most of what I’m calling for is already a majority proposition. Punishing ICE lawbreakers is popular: 53 percent of Americans think Jonathan Ross should face criminal consequences for shooting Renee Good. Total abolition of the agency was polling at 42 percent when I started writing this piece, it’s 46 percent now—and that’s before any significant campaigning has been done on it.
When ordinary Americans are standing up to armed fascist thugs who can kill them with immunity, campaigning on a 46 percent issue is not too much courage to ask for from Democrats. And momentum is on our side; the more the public sees of ICE, the less they like it. Some politicians seem to have an aversion to the specific word “abolish.” Fine. Call it “replace.” Or anything really. As long as the end point is clear.
The question I would ask is, are alternate phrasings being put forward to help skittish Democrats get where they need to be, or to urge them not to get there, to stop short of what must be done? The Searchlight Institute, a think tank that describes itself as promoting “a moderate voice” and urges Democrats to “get away from woke, identity politics” recently weighed in against “abolish.” It was “advocating for an extreme,” they claimed, linking it to defund and accepting the right’s disingenuous argument that it would leave the country without any immigration enforcement. Their proposed alternative—“reform and retrain”—isn’t meant to ease Democrats in; it’s meant to stop them going further. I’d add—and I say this simply as a statement of observable facts—that this worldview, what I call reactionary centrism, has been wrong about virtually everything in the Trump era. There really is no reason to listen to them.
I’m not someone who’s forever yelling at Democrats to “Do Something!,” or blaming them for the crimes of the administration. A lot of energy is wasted arguing in general terms about whether the party is “meeting the moment.” Rather, we should judge them by specific policies. I propose that our praise, criticism, and primary votes be based on if politicians commit to a reconstruction agenda that includes ICE abolition and accountability.
And I think, ultimately, they will. Leadership and many mainline representatives are making strong statements right now, but stopping well short of what’s needed. But things aren’t going to be getting better anytime soon; appalling crimes will continue to occur, public opinion will move further against ICE, and activists will continue to pressure politicians to take a harder line. I suspect they’ll evolve, step by step. Perhaps “more training” at first, more oversight, then maybe budget cuts. Calls for a congressional investigation, then maybe a criminal one. That is, after all, the same dance we saw done within the party on court reform. Small step by small step, coaxing politicians along so they never had to make too big a leap.
You know what would be nice? If we didn’t have to do that. If they could, for once, just get there. The coalition is ready: 85 percent of Democrats disapprove of ICE, 70 percent support abolition. And partisan signaling would boost both those numbers if the party fully committed. Bill Kristol called for abolition. This isn’t some fringe left thing.
I’ll take a terrified moderate over a fascist any day. But wouldn’t it be so much better to have people leading the party of liberalism who didn’t need to be nagged? Who were just there. Who instinctively understood their base—and hated those trying to kill us. Think of all the mutual frustration and acrimony we could save if the party leaders could, just this one time, lead.
At any rate, those are the paths: Option A is the Democratic Party immediately gets to where their team already is. Option B is a long, slow, stupid dance of nagging, coaxing, and primaries.
Option C is fascism.
What is happening in Minneapolis is just the start. Recall the proposed 100 million deportations. We’re not talking about population transfers (as horrific as that would be). Rather, Trump will expand the network of domestic concentration camps and prisons on foreign territory, similar to how much of the killing in the Holocaust occurred outside of Germany. And that will follow—deaths from abuse and neglect will increase, eventually transitioning into systematic mass murder. Eyeballing it, I’d say they don’t have the capacity to get to the scale of Nazi Germany right now. But the willingness is there. And if they can consolidate power, their capacity will increase. Either way, we’re looking at mass graves.
The instinct of many will be to instantly dismiss such a scenario. To say that the administration, in proposing 100 million deportations, is floating something approximating 10 Holocausts sounds like it simply cannot be true. But we’ve seen the same pattern repeat enough times now: From refusing to accept election results, to purges, to killing in the street, again and again, the fascists have told us what they’re planning to do. Again and again, it’s been assumed they must be joking. Again and again, they’ve shown they are not.
