{"id":197182,"date":"2026-01-17T07:16:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/they-couldnt-abolish-ice-in-trumps-first-term-now-more-americans-are-taking-up-the-call-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:16:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:16:52","slug":"they-couldnt-abolish-ice-in-trumps-first-term-now-more-americans-are-taking-up-the-call-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/they-couldnt-abolish-ice-in-trumps-first-term-now-more-americans-are-taking-up-the-call-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"They couldn\u2019t \u2018Abolish ICE\u2019 in Trump\u2019s first term. Now more Americans are taking up the call – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

To longtime immigrant rights activists, the reckoning around the fatal shooting in Minnesota may feel familiar
US citizens and permanent residents: have you been racially profiled by ICE?<\/a>
A<\/span>s mass protests erupted over the past week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Nicole Good, thousands of Americans hoisted signs and marched to thunderous chants of \u201cabolish ICE\u201d.
The mantra has quickly captured the bursting anger and grief of a nation; activists and progressive lawmakers like the representative Ayanna Pressley, and even the conservative commentator Bill Kristol<\/a> have embraced the demand. Shri Thanedar, a Democratic representative from Michigan, said he planned to introduce the \u201cAbolish ICE act\u201d, a bill that would dismantle the federal agency and its current enforcement authority. For the first time, more US adults now support eliminating ICE than those who oppose it, according to a new Economist\/YouGov poll<\/a>.
It wasn\u2019t just the 7 January shooting of Good, a mother of three and US citizen, in Minneapolis, that has sparked outrage over Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown. In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody<\/a>, making it the agency\u2019s deadliest year in two decades. Worksite raids in cities such as Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago have led to the arrest of thousands of immigrants without due process<\/a> and triggered massive protests demanding that federal agents leave their communities and be held accountable for alleged human rights abuses.
To longtime immigrant rights activists, the reckoning may feel familiar.
Juan Prieto, the digital communications manager for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said the movement today to end or rein in ICE was \u201cso much realization\u201d of the legwork and learnings laid down by the first iteration of \u201cabolish ICE\u201d. \u201cA lot of directly impacted advocates taught American citizens how to look out for immigrants,\u201d he said.
In the summer of 2018, \u201cabolish ICE\u201d became a rallying cry as thousands took to the streets to protest against immigrant family separations under Trump\u2019s first term. Top Democrats, such as 2020 presidential hopefuls and senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand<\/a>, adopted the demand. Just as quickly, though, the momentum spluttered. Party leaders and strategists declared the slogan a divisive, unpopular policy demand<\/a> that would hurt Democrats\u2019 electoral chances, and it fell from mainstream political discourse even as deportations soared<\/a> under the Joe Biden presidency. Eight years later, with the country again in the throes of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdowns, activists at the forefront of \u201cabolish ICE\u201d say the campaign set in motion today\u2019s anti-ICE resistance. The movement\u2019s setbacks can also form a blueprint for building a stronger movement.
\u201cThere are lessons about taking to the streets,\u201d said Jacinta Gonz\u00e1lez, a leading immigrant rights organizer for more than 15 years. \u201cBut this time around, we\u2019re building community and building a vision about what having a world without ICE can look like.\u201d
The push to abolish ICE has its roots in the police and prison abolition movement that Black scholars like Angela Davis had long advocated for. But the phrase \u201cabolish ICE\u201d became a call to arms seemingly overnight when political strategist Sean McElwee typed it in a tweet that went viral.
\u201cThe central assumption of ICE in 2018 is that any undocumented immigrant is inherently a threat,\u201d McElwee wrote in an article for the Nation<\/a> that same year. \u201cIn that way, ICE\u2019s tactics are philosophically aligned with racist thinkers like Richard Spencer and the writers at the white-supremacist journal VDare.\u201d
ICE was created in 2003 as a unit of the brand-new Department of Homeland Security, in response to the 9\/11 terrorist attacks. The agency is primarily tasked with locating, detaining and forcibly removing undocumented immigrants. Securing the border and enforcing Trump\u2019s family separation policy are functions of Customs and Border Protection, another federal agency established in 2003.
While it seemed to come out of nowhere, the movement to abolish ICE was built on many years of grassroots organizing led by undocumented immigrants. Anti-ICE organizing started practically as soon as the agency formed, but it gained momentum during the record number of deportations under Barack Obama\u2019s administration<\/a>, said Amy Gottlieb, an immigrant rights lawyer and activist with the group American Friends Service Committee.
Obama\u2019s policy of deporting \u201cfelons, not families\u201d, Gottlieb said, also perpetuated the enduring narrative of \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d immigrants \u2013 the idea that some are more deserving of citizenship than others \u2013 that would drive a wedge among immigrant rights groups. \u201cAs we moved into that first Trump administration<\/a>, I think there was a sense of real anger at how many people were deported,\u201d she said.
Gonz\u00e1lez, the head of programs at digital rights non-profit MediaJustice and a founding organizer of the No Tech for Ice campaign, said the early Trump years pulled back the curtains on how ICE operated. \u201cThe first Trump administration was a moment when they were very unapologetic about the fact that the cruelty was the point,\u201d said Gonz\u00e1lez, who was a senior campaign organizer for the Latinx rights group Mijente at the time. \u201cWe saw it as our goal to free people from those types of surveillance and detention and deportation.\u201d
Throughout the sweltering summer months, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated and camped outside federal detention centers<\/a> across the country, shutting down facilities in several cities. One woman, Patricia Okoumou, scaled the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty<\/a> in protest against Trump\u2019s hardline immigration policies.
The momentum behind the \u201cabolish ICE\u201d campaign grew so strong that a dozen legislators endorsed the cause. In the 2018 midterm elections, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made dismantling ICE a central campaign demand in her upset victory over the representative Joe Crowley. The representative Mark Pocan introduced legislation to eliminate the agency, though it didn\u2019t gain much traction in the House.
\u201cI think our wins against detention centers really started to happen after that point,\u201d said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network and author of Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition. \u201cI think a lot of that was because new people were entering the fight, new people really understanding the role of ICE in their local communities and the sort of entanglements that existed.\u201d
Shah said the \u201cabolish ICE\u201d campaign faltered after Biden took office because his administration failed to establish itself as a foil to Republicans on immigration matters.
\u201cThe movement didn\u2019t know how to pressure the Biden administration<\/a> because they didn\u2019t signal they cared to do much about immigration,\u201d Shah said. \u201cPeople were pushing for some sort of relief, but because of the narrative around the border, Biden shied away from the issue and didn\u2019t put forth much of a pro-immigrant stance.\u201d
Though Biden didn\u2019t conduct the same scale of interior enforcement as Trump did, Shah said, the focus quickly shifted away from fighting deportations to addressing the border crisis. Much of the legislation and policy changes that emerged from the \u201cabolish ICE\u201d movement, she said, was focused on reviewing or replacing the agency rather than shuttering it.
For some who have been fighting the agency\u2019s deportation machine since the beginning, even \u201cabolish ICE\u201d doesn\u2019t fully capture the movement\u2019s goals, given that ridding the agency still leaves behind enforcement mechanisms that allow for the mass detention and deportation of immigrants.
\u201cAbolishing ICE needs to be the floor, not the pinnacle,\u201d Shah said. \u201cGoing back to a system with fewer agents and more collaboration with local police is not the solution.\u201d
Prieto, at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said the movement struggled against a lack of courage and \u201cpolitical imagination\u201d from the Democratic party. Rather than capitalizing on the popular, unflinching demand to abolish ICE and the deportation apparatus, Prieto said, Democrats ended up capitulating to Republicans as the country moved right. Kamala Harris, who called for a restructuring of ICE ahead of her 2020 presidential bid, adopted a tough-on-immigration stance<\/a> in her presidential run four years later. Last January, shortly after Trump\u2019s inauguration, 46 House Democrats voted with Republicans<\/a> for a bill that required the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes.
\u201cDemocrats consistently struggle with utilizing grassroots momentum to actually create tangible change that better reflects the needs of people on the ground,\u201d said Prieto, who was organizing with the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance in 2018.
Despite the setbacks, Prieto said the 2018 \u201cabolish ICE\u201d campaign laid the groundwork for much of the grassroots resistance against the agency today, including \u201cknow your rights\u201d workshops, the many rapid-response groups supporting families targeted by raids, and the growing efforts to close detention facilities across the country.
\u201cICE losing credibility in the public\u2019s eye, the recognition of how much power there is in showing up, all that is thanks to the work that happened under the first eruption of the \u2018abolish ICE\u2019 movement,\u201d Prieto said.
Mantras and chants have shaped the movements of Trump\u2019s second term. But the slogans that mobilized the masses over the past year, such as the \u201cNo Kings\u201d and \u201cHands Off\u201d protests, were expressions engineered by national organizations, rather than organic phrases that took off on social media. Over the past week, fervent calls to abolish ICE found new life because Good\u2019s death sparked a collective outrage reminiscent of that during the immigrant family separations.
Gonz\u00e1lez said explicit calls for abolition have not gained as much traction until now because the stakes \u2013 the danger of engaging in activism under this administration \u2013 are higher. But that doesn\u2019t mean the work has stopped.
\u201cWe just witnessed someone lose her life just being a civilian present,\u201d she said, \u201cand you still have people showing up to do the same thing, coming together to make sure people are fed, are still going to school is astounding.\u201d
To capitalize on the current moment of reckoning, Prieto said, the Democratic party has to engage with the demands of protesters and immigrant rights activists to abolish all systems of policing, detention and enforcement \u2013 a campaign that does not end with the dismantling of ICE.
\u201cIt\u2019s coming to terms with the reality that we\u2019re living in and really having the political imagination necessary to get us out,\u201d Prieto said. \u201cOur opposition has a vision of an authoritarian white nationalist utopia that they\u2019re working day in and day out to accomplish. I don\u2019t think our leaders have that level of progressive envisioning.\u201d<\/p>\n

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To longtime immigrant rights activists, the reckoning around the fatal shooting in Minnesota may feel familiarUS citizens and permanent residents: have you been racially profiled by ICE?As mass protests erupted over the past week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Nicole Good, thousands of Americans hoisted signs and marched to thunderous chants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}