Let’s face it, the movement “Abolish ICE” has been a complete mess and is getting us nowhere, fast. The truth of the matter is that ICE is not separating families at the borders. It’s not even enforcing immigrations laws on our borders, that’s the job of CBP, or Border Patrol.
Yes, families are being torn apart and children are being imprisoned in cages, and yes, we do need to fight against that. However, abolishing ICE would not fix America’s faux problem with immigration. I say faux problem because most of the issues at our borders are greatly inflated fears stemming from intrinsically racist mentalities, but that’s a different argument for another blog.
ICE was created in response to the September 11 attacks. It is a branch off of Homeland Security. That being said, there are many branches off of Homeland Security that focus on immigration policies, terrorism, and international affairs. ICE just happens to be an easy target and scapegoat for the problems we are dealing with.
America’s issue with immigration is greater than ICE. The hate against its different cultures and the blind love for our country is too large to get rid of by just disseminating one government organization.
About a week and a half ago, it came to light that Trump and his team had funneled out around 10 million dollars from FEMA into ICE. 10 Million dollars were taken from a disaster relief program and put into ICE. Trump decided that in a time of wildfires and hurricanes, it would be a good idea to take away money from a disaster relief program so that he could keep the fears of our border strong.
Seeing that Trump had no problem making this large transaction, it is easy to deduce that he would do it again with any other program that would help his cause of border protection. After all, a large part of his plan to “Make America Great Again” is to build a wall on our southern border.
Abolishing ICE would only result in Trump funneling money into another organization that essentially does the same thing as ICE. In fact, ICE itself has brought up the idea to break itself apart and merging into other branches of Homeland Security. This would result in a strengthening of ICE under a different name.
ICE is a symptom of a large disease affecting this country. Like a hydra, cutting off ICE would just result in another department taking over it’s position. The only way to fight back is to look deeper into why ICE and Border Patrol are able to do the terrible things they do.
There are specific policies that are allowing Border Patrol to tear families apart, and those policies can definitely be challenged. We still have our voices and our right to vote on things. Instead of trying to rally behind broad movements like “Abolish ICE” we have to use our power to be rid of the mentalities and policies that allowed ICE to be created in the first place.
1 comment for “Abolishing ICE is not the answer”