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Mychal Denzel Smith is the author of “Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream,” winner of the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the city of Minneapolis is under federal occupation. Since the beginning of January, when the Trump administration sent 2,000 federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a racist crusade against the city’s Somali population, the people of Minneapolis have been under siege.
People have been roughed up, children tear-gassed, and of course there was the heinous shooting and killing of Renee Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, captured on video.
It has been entirely predictable, then, as more Americans have witnessed the ways in which ICE has operated as a violent, lawless force, that there would be renewed calls from people across the country to “Abolish ICE” — a much-maligned activist demand that gained some traction during the first Trump administration.
It has also been entirely predictable that establishment Democrats have tried to distance themselves from the idea.
After Good was killed, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made waves by telling ICE, “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis” — but softened his tone in an appearance on Fox News: “I do not support abolishing ICE.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the top Democrat on appropriations subcommittee, which oversees the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, told protesters outside of an ICE office in Washington that their goal should be to “make ICE comply with the law.” Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., dismissed the idea of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus working to terminate ICE.
Few, if any, of the Democratic Party’s powerbrokers are willing to side with the likes of progressive like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who has held steadfast in her support of shutting ICE down.
Incremental Reformers
So, if they’re not abolishing ICE, what are members of the Democratic establishment doing? According to Politico, top Democrats in D.C. have been “feverishly working to fund the agency — with strings attached.”
Those strings are reforms — the kind of incrementalism that has failed time and again with the far right.
Some of the changes are literally cosmetic. Among a few meatier reforms, Murphy wants to ban ICE agents from wearing masks. Other proposals are more substantial. Rep. Delia Ramirez, The Intercept reported, says she will introduce a bill to limit the use of deadly force by ICE and other DHS agencies.
While Democrats have certainly shown more teeth responding to the ICE occupation of Minneapolis than they have during the rest of the second Trump administration, their incrementalism also shows how out of step they continue to be with the American public — which is rapidly turning against ICE.
Public Opinion Swing
For the first time, according to a recent poll conducted by The Economist/YouGov, there is more support for abolishing ICE — 46 percent — than there is for those opposed to abolishing ICE, at 43 percent.
These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt: The poll was conducted in the emotionally charged days immediately following Good’s killing. Still, 46 percent is high, nearly a majority. That’s a higher level of approval than when the first slogan first took hold in 2019, when support for abolishing ICE was 32 percent.
And the survey respondents’ ideological self-identifications point to something potentially astounding. This was not just a poll of leftists: While 29 percent of those surveyed said they were liberals, 33 percent identified as conservative and 29 identified as moderate.
That means a chunk of the nearly half of respondents who support abolishing ICE came from the latter two categories. Though a relatively small chunk, the numbers suggest that “Abolish ICE” is on its way to becoming the moderate position.
What’s more, the recent change has been dramatic: In July of last year, in a poll by the same body, just 27 percent of respondents supporting abolishing ICE.
A major shift is underway. And Democrats, as usual, are shifting slower than the people they are supposed to represent.
How to Win
Despite the numbers, establishment Democrats seem committed to hedging, to trying to find compromise and common ground with deeply unpopular positions.
If they do, they are not only abdicating a moral duty to fight authoritarianism and defend the democratic promises of the Constitution, but they are also blowing another opportunity to set themselves apart politically.
It’s the same mistake they’ve made again and again, which has again and again cost them at the voting booth. The real problem with Kamala Harris, which few Democrats will identify, is that her program had little to set her apart from Democrats like Hillary Clinton, whose campaign failed, and Joe Biden, who was deeply unpopular and on his way to a flop. As Zohran Mamdani has shown, setting yourself apart by being bold can actually be a path to wining back power.
It’s not going to happen all at once, of course. No one should expect that Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the consummate anti-left moderate, will come out and say, “Abolish ICE.”
But for the sake of their political lives — and more importantly, the actual lives of the people who have been under federal occupation in cities across the country — Democrats would serve themselves well to get closer to fighting to take away ICE’s funding and then dismantle the agency.
It might just be the moderate position.
