People wanting to abolish ICE are not, generally, calling for doing away with immigration enforcement entirely. The main thing I've seen called for is the abolition of ICE, and the restoration of the pre-DHS Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), not under the DHS, but under the DOJ. I have also seen calls to eliminate the DHS entirely, and separate out the agencies under it to their pre-DHS organization.

I'll be honest, I don't think I've ever actually heard someone give a reason why the US having open borders would be a bad thing. You are a country of immigrants, and your greatness was built upon that foundation.

Yet now it's getting undone for seemingly no reason. But I hope that there would actually be one, so please enlighten me and the other commenters.

Then you're engaging in the black and white thinking fallacy.

> "have no immigration enforcement and permanently halt deportations” is also unacceptable? The latter seems to be the solution being pushed by one party.

What party? What makes it "seem" that way? Could you link to anyone calling for this?

Years ago, I would have agreed with most of what you wrote. The left, like the right, reacts with emotion and absolutism. No one is above this, so I think it is very important that we frequently assess what would actually change our minds.

Given the present tide of things, however, I think there's no amount of course-correction back toward the left that would prove excessive. My opinion on this will change as soon as the tide does, and e.g. a leftist president endorses indiscriminate murder of ICE agents, or something equally egregious to what we're seeing in the opposite direction.

In a more ideological sense, though, I tend to despise the left/right continuum and think it is unhelpful for analysis.

> “have no immigration enforcement and permanently halt deportations” is also unacceptable? The latter seems to be the solution being pushed by one party.

Obama and Biden, famously, deported more people than Trump. And with a substantially smaller budget too. Is this "no immigration enforcement" party in the room with us right now?

The irony of this comment is that deportations were higher under Biden than during Trump's first term, which makes it seem exactly like it was "written by teenagers, based on emotions." The administration with the highest deportation rate in the past 60 years was the 2nd Clinton administration.

> The latter seems to be the solution being pushed by one party.

Is it? I'm not aware of legislation introduced by the democrats, either when they were in power or today, that proposed anything resembling this. There are individual congresspeople calling for ICE to be abolished (which is not the same as having no immigration enforcement) but leadership within the democrats is very clear that they support extremely minor reforms like making ICE agents wear masks less frequently. This is considerably more minor than disarming ICE agents, which you claim would have nationwide support.

You are completely out of touch with what the immigration policy of the last democratic government (Biden 2020) was.

It was aggressive, it was inhumane, and immigrants were killed despite a massive effort by people from "the left" to feed and clothe people who were detained in open fields or between two border fences without any care being provided by the US agencies detaining them.

Maybe you are right that nobody who is right-leaning trusts that the US democratic party isn't pro border enforcement and anti immigration, but that's based purely on lies and propaganda.

Then shouldn't you blame the party making a absolute shitshow of enforcing immigration out of incompetence and cruelty instead ? (and pressuring a state for its voters roll in the foolish attempt at meddlmeddling with the next election)

If I want what I believe is a reasonable policy and the enforcers of that policy start doing the worst job ever, it is my duty to call them out, not to call out the opposing side for mostly imaginary reasons.

Abolish ICE is not a unreasonable take. If the agents working in this agency have become some ultra politicized paramilitary, it makes sense to abolish it and create a new agency altogether.

ICE as an institution is fundamentally evil.

It's using immigration as a pretext to build an unaccountable group of thugs that disappear people into camps, murder political opponents and surveil the populace (as seen in OP). It's recruiting primarily from far-right militias, regularizing them into a paramilitary force of the regime.

There is no justifiable reason to have them terrorize an entire city like they have been doing in Minneapolis.

The brownshirts needed to be abolished in the 1920s, a pinky-swear they wouldn't do the thing they were designed to do wouldn't have been enough.

The same applies to their modern equivalent.

ICE is being converted into a militia controlled by Trump. So keeping it around may be dangerous.

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