Don’t Let the Democrats Co-opt the Movement Against ICE Again

The movement for immigrant rights is at a crossroads. At its epicenter in Minneapolis, the Trump administration claims that Operation Metro Surge is ending, albeit with caveats that suggest otherwise. Nationally, however, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is expanding its operations. And in Washington, DC, the two major parties are supposedly battling over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In response to the growing outrage against Trump’s war on immigrants, which the events in Minneapolis have turned into a national scandal, the Democrats are demanding reforms to ICE as a condition for their votes to fund DHS. As a result, DHS has gone unfunded for several days, resulting in a shutdown of the agency. Various news outlets report that a resolution isn’t expected anytime soon. The reforms the Democrats are demanding include a requirement that federal officials obtain a warrant before entering private property, a prohibition on federal agents wearing masks to hide their identities, a requirement for body cameras on agents, and limits on where agents can operate.

Let’s be very clear: in Minneapolis and in countless other communities where people are fighting to protect their immigrant neighbors, the movement is not merely demanding reforms. The call is for a total end to ICE’s reign of terror in our communities. A significant sector of the movement and the wider population even champions the demand to “ABOLISH ICE!”

Most importantly, however, the people of Minneapolis aren’t simply making demands for elected officials to take up. Thousands have organized themselves, putting forward creative initiatives from their neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces to protect their communities instead of waiting for elected politicians to act.

In response to the radicalization of the movement against ICE in Minneapolis, the Trump administration and local Democrats, particularly Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have been collaborating to contain the situation. This strategy of negotiating with the Right for a compromise mirrors negotiations taking place in Congress. The Democratic Party has spent decades building up the repressive apparatus of immigration enforcement that Trump is now using to terrorize communities across the country. The Democrats do not oppose anti-immigrant policies; they just disagree on how to implement those policies. That is essentially what they’re negotiating right now.

Of course, there are those within the party who hold a more radical stance. Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, for example, have recently called for abolishing ICE. In New Jersey, Analilia Mejía made national headlines for unexpectedly winning a Democratic primary, thanks in part to her strong opposition to the agency. But even these more left-leaning figures, whether or not they intend to demobilize the movement, contribute to its containment by giving activists renewed faith that they can achieve their demands within an imperialist party and within the institutions of the capitalist state, which are repressive and chauvinist by design.

The Democrats find themselves in a challenging position as they attempt to “win back” the working class that once formed their electoral coalition after decades of championing neoliberalism and eroding workers’ and poor people’s rights and living conditions. In a moment when the Trump administration is being challenged from below, it is critical for the Democrats to seize the opportunity to bring the working class back under their wing and avoid further alienating it or pushing it away from either capitalist party.

Drawing Conclusions from Trump’s First Term

With the Democrats now acting to contain the movement against ICE, it is important to remember the experience of the immigrant rights movement during Trump’s first term. The infamous family-separation policy, which defined Trump’s assault on immigrants, sparked a larger discussion about ICE’s role in executing aggressive anti-immigrant policies. From 2016 to 2020, many people got involved in immigrant rights activism for the first time.

With this increase in immigrant rights activity and greater scrutiny of the United States’ restrictive and inhumane immigration system, the demand to abolish ICE began to gain traction. This demand represented a significant advance for a movement that had long focused on fighting for reforms to the carceral system rather than questioning its legitimacy. This perspective coexisted with imperialism, aiming to give it a more humane face rather than confronting a system that ghettoizes and exploits immigrants.

While some on the left try to downplay the emergence of more radical demands, arguing that the call to abolish ICE was confined to “ultra-left” bubbles online, those of us who were actually in the movement at the time know that the idea of abolishing ICE resonated with broader sectors of society who were horrified by Trump’s policies. Abolitionist writer and organizer Silky Shah documents this history thoroughly in her book Unbuild Walls.

This energy, however, was stifled by the Biden campaign, which promised to be a lesser evil on immigration. Once in office, Biden continued nearly all of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, even expanding some. Leading organizations in the immigrant rights movement, often linked to Democrat bureaucracies, mobilized less and scrutinized less during Biden’s four years in office. This demobilization ceded space to the Far Right and mainstream media, which spent Biden’s entire term manufacturing a crisis at the border to falsely depict the Biden administration as too lenient on immigration. All the while, Biden ramped up surveillance at the border and increased funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Ultimately, Trump returned to office with an even more extreme anti-immigrant campaign, promising mass deportations.

As Mark Twain said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. We are once again witnessing growing support for immigrant rights and scrutiny of immigration enforcement, a result of Trump overplaying his hand with his extreme anti-immigrant measures. The Democrats are again attempting to benefit electorally from the outrage over Trump’s attacks on immigrants. But unlike the last time these dynamics played out, the immigrant rights movement has learned from its experience of relying on the Democrats for leadership. Moreover, the situation in Minneapolis has demonstrated the power of workers, students, and communities to organize themselves from below to resist ICE.

As the Trump administration backtracks and the Democrats maneuver, it is essential for the movement to draw lessons from its recent experiences and apply insights from the fight in Minneapolis to strengthen our struggle for immigrant rights across the country. This building institutions where we can organize our fights democratically and independently from the Democrats. And it requires not watering down our demands, and instead fighting for a movement that champions the call to abolish ICE, as well as full political, social, and economic rights for immigrants.

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