There’s a movement afoot to abolish the federal agency, but how do we get there, and what do we do in the meantime?
“Abolish ICE.” It’s the rallying cry and end goal emanating from Occupy ICE demonstrations in Portland, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, San Diego, Los Angeles and Detroit, as well as protests and rallies against Trump administration immigration policies across the country.
Oregon lawmakers have joined the burgeoning movement, also calling for an end to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On its surface, the demand seems futile under a presidential administration more interested in ramping ICE up than shutting ICE down, but U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) explains that’s not the point.
On June 28, Blumenauer announced he was joining Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) in introducing legislation that would dismantle ICE and establish a commission that would make recommendations on its replacement, a more “humane and service-oriented system.”
“I’m not stupid. I understand the Republicans aren’t going to let it pass, and if it did, Donald Trump would veto it,” he told Street Roots.
To actually abolish ICE, he said, “it’s going to require a new president and a better Congress.”
While the country may have to wait for a new president, the face of Congress may change in November, and Blumenauer said that could put lawmakers “in a much better position to hold ICE accountable.”
But that doesn’t mean his ill-fated bill is pointless.
“We need to put down a marker,” he said. “We need to have people think about an alternative, and we need to have people think about what’s happened with an agency that looks like it’s just kind of spun out of control.”
Blumenauer was visibly shaken during a press conference following his visit to Sheridan Federal Correctional Facility on June 16, where he met with immigrant and asylum seeking men who are detained there.
After listening to the detainees’ stories – one man’s house was set on fire because he’s Christian, another was shot by the cartel – Blumenauer said he was convinced many of the men were fleeing “very dangerous situations.”
For Oregon Rep. Diego Hernandez (D-East Portland), Abolish ICE is not about the “nuts and bolts” of dismantling the organization.
“As simplistic as Abolish ICE, as a hashtag, as a movement, can be,” he said, “as far as the values go, you’re going to find commonalities in our values, and from there is where you can start building systems that have those values and goals as center.”
Hernandez and other state lawmakers, Sen. Michael Dembrow and Reps. Sheri Malstrom and Rob Nosse, together called for an end of ICE on the steps of Portland City Hall on June 24.
He was a freshman in high school during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and said he experienced the ensuing racism. It was also the Sept. 11 attacks that paved the way to ICE’s formation.
ICE was created under the Homeland Security Act of 2003, which was passed in response to the threat of terrorism. The act completely revamped U.S. immigration enforcement as part of a federal law enforcement overhaul. The Department of Homeland Security absorbed 22 federal agencies, including ICE’s predecessor, Immigration and Naturalization Services, which had been overseen by the Department of Justice.
Ultimately, a system that lumped terrorism and immigration into the same branch of government was created.
Blumenauer voted against the Homeland Security Act, he said, because “it was being rushed in the aftermath of 9/11, and I just didn’t think it was focused, and I didn’t think we knew what we were doing.”
He said his concerns have been justified in the years since. “We’ve lurched ahead in the name of ‘national security and terrorist threats,’ doing lots of things that don’t have much to do with terrorism.”
ICE has been at the receiving end of criticism from immigrants’ rights groups for the duration of its 15-year existence, with critics taking issue with the way the agency treats immigrants as national security threats while the private prison industry profits off their incarceration. Now that the Abolish ICE movement has gone mainstream, Hernandez said it’s those organizations that should be at the forefront, directing the movement’s messaging and focus. “I’m not sure if that’s the case right now,” he said.
But to address immigration in a way that factors in human rights, U.S. policies extending beyond the abolition of ICE will need to be reconsidered.
Blumenauer said he’s been pointing out for years that the U.S. is partially to blame for the mass migration to its borders from Latin America in the first place.
He points to U.S. interference in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and the failed War on Drugs.
“We have responsibility to try and moderate it to try and make things better,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons we need to reform our failed drug laws. We still have a vast black market for marijuana in this country that funds some of the cartel violence. We haven’t been as aggressive as we should have been in terms of the economic development of that region. We need to spend more on trying to strengthen civil society rather than having punitive drug policies.”
While the abolition of ICE may be a goal for the future, Hernandez said there is plenty of work to do now on the local level.
“We can scream at the top of our lungs about what the federal government is doing, and there is stuff here that we’re not looking at in terms of immigrant rights in this state,” he said.
Given Oregon’s overwhelming rejection of Ballot Measure 88 four years ago, which would have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers’ cards, “we know that this state is still not friendly or pro-immigrants’ rights,” said Hernandez
As ICE ramps up raids and arrests, not having the ability to drive legally in Oregon poses an extra threat – not to mention added fear – of detainment to undocumented immigrants who live here.
He said when state and local agencies entertain contracts with ICE, such as the Northern Oregon Regional Corrections facility (NORCOR) in The Dalles and up until June 25, the Springfield jail, it sends a message to immigrant communities that “in Oregon, we do business with ICE.”
He said three main areas of local focus should be to get NORCOR to cancel their contract with ICE, give immigrants more opportunities to succeed – through drivers licenses and giving undocumented students the ability to pay for higher education – and defeating Initiative Petition 22, which seeks to repeal Oregon’s sanctuary-state status on the November ballot, should its proponents gather enough signatures.
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