My New The Hill Article: "Abolish ICE and Give the Money to Real Cops"

Today, The Hill published my article making the case for abolishing ICE and giving its funds to state and local police. Here is an excerpt:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has become notorious for its cruelty, abuses of civil liberties and racial profiling. As a result, the agency and the Trump administration’s deportation policies generally have become increasingly unpopular.

Yet most Democrats have hesitated to call for its abolition, likely because of fear of seeming to be “soft on crime.”

But there is a way out of this dilemma: Abolish ICE and give the money to state and local cops.

ICE’s abuses are legion. Its agents routinely detain people with little or no due process, even seizing American citizens and legal permanent residents, as well as illegal migrants…

The ubiquitous use of masks by ICE agents and their refusal to identify themselves and their agency protects them from accountability, ensuring that those targeted often have no way of knowing whether they are being seized by ICE agents, regular law enforcement or common criminals….

The alarming extent of racial and ethnic profiling by ICE is shown by the fact that the agency’s arrests in Los Angeles County declined by 66 percent after a federal court order barring the use of these and similar tactics. Conservatives and others who rightly seek a color-blind government must not turn a blind eye to racial discrimination by government agents who have the authority to arrest and detain people….

onditions in ICE detention facilities are often abysmal, featuring overcrowding, inadequate food and denial of needed medical treatment. These conditions are unfit even for the worst imprisoned criminals — and most ICE detainees are far from that. Despite administration claims that ICE is protecting the public against dangerous criminals, 65 percent of people detained as of June had no criminal record, and some 90 percent had no convictions for violent or property crime. Overall, undocumented immigrants have much lower crime rates than native-born Americans….

Growing public awareness of ICE abuses has made the agency very unpopular. Recent survey data indicates that large majorities disapprove of it, and a large minority — almost 40 percent in a recent tracking poll — already wants to abolish it.

Yet most Democrats have hesitated to call for the agency’s abolition, probably for fear of seeming to be soft on crime…. But opponents can avoid such accusations by combining abolition of ICE with reallocation of its funds to ordinary police, which would undercut accusations of being pro-criminal or anti-law enforcement. This could greatly expand support for abolition….

In my 2022 book “Free to Move,” I proposed dismantling ICE and giving the money to ordinary police, perhaps in the form of federal grants to state and local law enforcement. Recipient agencies should be required to use the funds to target violent and property crime, and abjure ICE-style abuses.

Putting more ordinary police on the streets is an effective way to reduce crime rates, according to a long line of studies….

Focusing on undocumented immigrants is a poor use of law enforcement resources…. Transferring ICE funds to state and local police would allow a greater focus on violent and property crime, regardless of the perpetrators’ background….

Abolishing ICE would not end all deportations. State and local authorities could still, in many cases, turn illegal migrants over to the federal government for removal… But abolishing ICE would make deportation much more dependent on state and local cooperation and would empower jurisdictions to make their own choices.

Leaving immigration restrictions more to the states would bring us closer to the Constitution’s original meaning. The Constitution does not explicitly grant immigration authority to the federal government, and Founding Fathers such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson rightly argued that it did not have any general power to bar migrants…..

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