The pattern is always the same: public demands change, but Democrats give in to political pressure and maintain the status quo, allowing the machinery to grow.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks during the joint news conference of House and Senate Democrats on DHS funding negotiations at the U.S. Capitol on February 4, 2026. Jeffries is flanked from left to right by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Rep. Bennie Thompson, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar and House Minority Whip Katherine Clark.(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) In January, the senseless murders of Renee Bon And Alex Pretti briefly forced many Americans to confront the brutalities of state violence. Millions of people took to the streets across the country to express their anger and outrage over the murders of a 37-year-old mother and poet and a 37-year-old nurse who cared for veterans. The idea that the CIE is irreformable and should be abolished has been no longer confined to the left. Even important conservative experts began to say openly what many progressives have said known for years: This agency cannot be restricted by standards, surveillance or exposure.
But as the administration says “shock and awe strategy” progresses, triggering a war with Iran and generating new crises at home, public attention has largely shifted from ICE violence to other attacks. Meanwhile, deportation operations have not stopped. ICE has continued to make hundreds, if not more than a thousand, arrests per day, with more than 32,000 people booked into ICE detention in March alone. Tens of thousands of community members continue to circulate in a large-scale detention system, largely out of public view and increasingly detached from any coherent claim to public safety.
Instead of supporting popular calls to abolish ICE at this critical moment, establishment Democrats have once again sprinted in the opposite direction. In title After titleDemocrats are portrayed as standing firm: blocking funding, demanding reforms, holding the line. But take a closer look at what this “line” is: they are not fighting to reduce the law enforcement state. They are negotiating the conditions under which this will continue.
What follows is always the same: a bag of guardrails, adjustments and comforts; small changes that seem serious but leave the underlying power exactly where it is.
ICE is dangerous and we are not wrong to demand that it be abolished as an agency. But what worries me most, and what will outlast ICE no matter what happens next, is a governing instinct that has become second nature among Democrats. Rather than enact real changes, Democratic lawmakers are doubling down on the same policies that produced the violence the public is protesting — look no further than Senator Cory Booker demanding body cameras, uniform codes of conduct, stricter mandate rules, “mask removal” – all while disguising them as “reform.”
This instinct is not new. I warned about this long-standing dynamic in a law review article more than 15 years ago on life sentences without parole for juveniles, in which I explained how criminal justice policy becomes a one-way ratchet, where expansion of state power is politically easy and contractions are almost impossible. The Republicans are pushing it forward. Democrats rarely reverse this trend. The machinery grows one way or another.
ICE is uniquely positioned to be a tool of abuse. The law enforcement agency was born in the early 2000s, at a time when Democrats felt they had to prove they were as tough as Republicans on terrorism and immigration. Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman was a central architect of this strategy. As chairman of the Senate committee charged with post-9/11 government restructuring, he helped design and defend the Department of Homeland Security, greatly expanding the reach of the federal government.
The gamble was familiar: build a powerful security agency and trust that professionalism will somehow prevent abuse.
That gamble has failed — violently — for more than two decades, as the agency has ramped up family separations, raids, militarized repression, civil rights violations and now broad daylight killings. Renee Good was killed by an ICE officer 10 years ago. Alex Pretti was killed by an eight-year-old Border Patrol officer. These officers were experienced federal agents, operating within a department that has repeatedly shown us exactly how it uses power – and stunner 85 billion dollars in federal funding it was granted.
And yet, instead of calling for cuts to that budget, leading Democrats are doubling down on calls for the professionalism that has allowed ICE to disguise its violence as public safety. Top Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are demand reforms— mandates, identification, tactical limits — as conditions for funding. In the Senate, Chris Murphy And Alex Padilla advocate accountability measures. Others, like Ruben Gallego, call for “guardrail”, standards and monitoring before supporting additional funding.
This response is not unlike what we saw from party leaders after the killing of George Floyd. Faced with undeniable violence, leaders rejected ultimately reasoned proposals and became frightened, redoubling their efforts. the policies themselves who produced evil, disguised as reform. And when police brutalized prominent protesters and journalists in New York as they denounced the violence, I talked about it then: The answer was not to significantly limit police power but to preserve it: new training, new task forces, new language, same results.
Establishment Democrats are so wedded to the logic of the criminal sanctions system that they transform popular calls for common-sense, evidence-based public safety policies as a minority demand of the radical left—one that must be contained rather than met. It costs them elections, and it costs millions of people their security and freedom. This trend is now fully visible in matters of immigration.
If politics were taken out of the equation, we would follow the evidence. Targeting immigrants for capture and deportation is not a legitimate public safety strategy…study After study shows that immigrants, documented and undocumented, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. The current mass deportation campaign is taking away thousands of people with no criminal history– not that a criminal record should determine value, or require separation and deportation – because this is an indiscriminate exercise of power, not public safety policy. More than half of people sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison during last year’s high-profile deportation had not been convicted of a crime in the United States. The data does not support an immigration system based on mass arrests and detentions.
What this highlights is something far less politically practical: the need to invest not in ICE or border enforcement, but in the basic mechanism of immigration law. Even before the current administration chainsawed what was left, our immigration system was under strain with years late of unprecedented cases before immigration courts, no guaranteed right to a lawyer even if legal representation results in fairer resultsno real path to legal status for the millions of long-term residents who do not fit into the narrow categories recognized by immigration law, and no rapid resolution for those with pending asylum applications. When immigrants can stay in their communities, earn a legal living, and receive a fair legal process, we are all safer. But instead of investing in stability, work authorization, and due process, Democrats continue to negotiate the terms of an enforcement mechanism that the evidence suggests we should dismantle.
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And without the real solution – abolishing ICE – real accountability would come in the form of robust, independent investigations separate from the agencies involved; the consequences for police officers who lie, abuse their power, or use violence, whether someone dies or not; limits on when armed forces are deployed, or whether they must be deployed at all; removal of federal agents from communities that have not invited them and do not consent to their presence.
The current choice is wrong. It is not between reform and chaos. It’s about preserving violent institutions with better language or telling the truth about what they are and acting accordingly.
The direct line between the Democrats of the early 2000s and today is important because it explains the issues of this moment. ICE was not inevitable. DHS was not inevitable. They are the result of political choices, made in a moment of fear and supported by leaders who believe that the violence of law enforcement comes from excess and not from intention. Two decades later, we are still suffering the consequences.
The policy choices Democrats make today will shape American life for decades to come. Instead of drowning out cries to abolish ICE by telling us the answer is to trust the same institutions with slightly better paperwork, Democrats need to commit to policies that actually keep their constituents safe. They must dismantle and stop funding ICE.
The cowardice of Democrats is why this violence continues to occur. It doesn’t have to be this way.
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Scott Hechinger Scott Hechinger is a civil rights attorney and executive director of Zealousa national coalition supporting local initiatives to harness media and storytelling for justice.
