Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The group is commonly called ICE, and it is the center of some of the most heated debates in our country right now. The right loves ICE because they’re successfully enforcing immigration law and keeping citizens safe. The left hates them for the same reason.
You’ll hear arguments that conflate things and try to relate ICE to Nazis and all other manner of extreme rhetoric, but underneath it all, the left is serving the same agenda they adopted decades ago.
You’re a reasonable person, so you might wonder why we even need a conversation about the abolition of ICE. But, since we live in a country that is roughly half liberal and their current motif is to compete on introducing extreme ideology, we’re now having a conversation about abolishing ICE.
The left is horrified that our country’s laws don’t allow us to put children in jail for the crimes of their parents, and that somehow justifies getting rid of an entire law enforcement agency.
Most Americans know that ICE is in charge of enforcing immigration law, but very few have a deep understanding of the organization. It was founded in 2003 as a branch of Homeland Security.
The original purpose was to create a group with the resources to try and prevent terrorists from crossing the border. This ultimately required ICE to have two branches. Half of the roughly 20,000 employees are dedicated to intelligence efforts, and the other half work in catching people who immigrate illegally.
At the very basic level, ICE wants to keep tabs on all illegal immigrants in order to account for these huge gaps in intelligence and find potential terrorists. The result of their efforts is that they discover huge numbers of unlawful immigrants and turn them over to the justice system.
So, if ICE exists to thwart terrorism, one way we can judge them is on their success rate. That’s tricky because much of their work is classified. What we do know is that incidents of terrorism committed by illegal immigrants have virtually fallen to zero since the group was established. On that merit alone, we’ve seen great success.
We’ve also seen that ICE bears a huge impact on drug smuggling and human traffic. What would happen if they were gone?
The very first thing we would see if ICE was abolished is a spike in human rights violations at the U.S. border. The most recent year with full numbers is 2016, and in that year, ICE stopped roughly 2,000 counts of human trafficking.
That’s more than 2,000 people who were either contributing to or victims of modern U.S. slavery. Apparently, the left doesn’t care about them. Open borders are more important than fighting slavery.
The second thing we would immediately see without ICE is a spike in drug trafficking. In 2017, ICE arrests reduced the flow of illegal drugs into the United States by roughly 40 percent. In an era where many consider the opioid epidemic one of the greatest dangers to the people of this country, that’s a big deal. But, we already knew that liberals don’t care about drug trafficking. They want all drugs legalized.
The third and most interesting immediate fallout that would stem from abolishing ICE is political. The Democratic Party would fully fissure. As it turns out, well over 50 percent of Americans are firmly against this movement. Even among Democrats, there is no clear majority supporting the destruction of ICE. If the party fully adopts this notion, they’ll further alienate their very large moderate base.
It’s worth remembering that a majority of Democrats proved themselves moderate in the last election. Progressives are a vocal minority, and their extremism makes for entertaining television, but they’re still clearly a minority. If Democrats continue to cater to them, they’ll become a minor party.
Really, this is what happens when you build your base on the corruption of basic morality. The Democrats can’t win through logic, so they scream demonizing insults at any dissent.
The party of open borders has to try to protect the right of people around the world to illegally cross our border. They’re finding that they can’t sway educated and informed voters, so they need more illegal votes to maintain their power. Dissolving ICE is so extreme that even their own ranks are hesitant, but it’s the only way forward for the party of extremism.
~ American Liberty Report
