The horrors of the past week have been heavy on our minds. From the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detaining a five-year-old boy and using him as bait to the murder of Alex Pretti. These abuses have become impossible to ignore and we are calling on our elected officials to end all support for ICE.
The Trump administration is using ICE as its own secret police and facing no repercussions from republicans in the house and senate. No agency with a $70+ billion budget should be allowed to operate without meaningful oversight while communities are traumatized, people are murdered, and witnesses are detained instead of protected. That money could be invested in healthcare, housing, education, legal pathways, and community safety things that actually make people safer.
Democrats cannot keep issuing statements while continuing to fund the machinery of harm. Silence is complicity. Incremental reforms are not enough.
ICE needs to be abolished. While we understand why some urge the language of reform, the reality of this moment demands greater clarity and honesty. ICE is no longer operating as a flawed agency in need of adjustment, it is functioning as an enforcement arm of an increasingly authoritarian regime, with documented patterns of abuse that reflect a systemic failure across the Department of Homeland Security. Reform presumes accountability, transparency, and enforceable guardrails, conditions that no longer meaningfully exist. When an institution is structurally designed to violate rights and operates with impunity, dismantling and rebuilding is not rhetoric, it is a democratic necessity rooted in human dignity, constitutional values, and the rule of law.
We are calling on our elected officials to support abolishing ICE and for Democrats everywhere to lean on their representatives to do the same. Our country has granted the executive branch of government immense power out of fear for immigration. This fear has elected Donald Trump twice and has led to senseless murder by masked thugs posing as law enforcement.
Call your reps. Let them know that we will hold them accountable if they do not fight and vote to end ICE.