Why would any Republican be against abolishing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)? Any Republican worth their salt should be entirely behind abolishing ICE and replacing it. Why? Glad you asked!

1. Reduce the size of government

Come on, that’s an easy one! How many Republicans go on and on about “reducing the size of government?” How many came out in full support of the Trump Administration merging/eliminating the Department of Labor and Department of Education? The calls to eliminate the EPA? Abolishing ICE makes just as much sense to support, doesn’t it?

Under the Trump Administration they’ve released a plan to effectively hire 26,000 more people to that department over the next 6 years. Why would you support MORE government?

2. Eliminate corruption

Then there’s the corruption! ICE chief counsel, Raphael A. Sanchez, was charged with stealing the identities of numerous illegal immigrants. And that’s only the tip of the ICEberg! What about the fact that they forced agents to lie about what local officials were doing in order to make their agency look good

3. Free up resources for more important things

ICE was created in 2003 under George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11. The plan was to overhaul how the United States handled multiple things and ensure there was more talk between government agencies. One problem, though, was ICE. It merged the 80+ year agency Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with the United States Customs Service. By merging these two agencies and focusing on crime the idea was to streamline things.

Instead it created a mess. It created a weird law enforcement agency with federal power but unclear objective and initiatives. Most notably when Trump’s Justice Department said it wanted “zero tolerance” at the border for illegal immigrants, it also meant ICE had to do what it could to help. Which is complicated and means they now have to go into local cities and states where they know families are living illegally, storm in, and take them in.

In turn, the people who want to focus on Customs don’t like the fact that they are lumped in with ICE. They’re unable to focus on their core jobs and are in favor of abolishing ICE.

4. STATES RIGHTS

ICE means the federal government can come into your state, your township, and YOUR TOWN, and demand that your local government does what it wants. Instead of your town being able to make and enforce its own laws, the federal government comes in and disrespects your sovereignty and imposes federalism. Your local police aren’t able to enforce the law as they see fit. Instead the rights of a state are denied and are forced to comply with the federal government.

What Republican really is in favor of that?

So what would replace it?

That’s a good question.

Most likely it would mean reinstating the INS and United States Customs Service, meaning that INS would still have to do SOME of what ICE was doing, but it frees up resources to allow them to actually enforce the laws and Customs to do what they need to.

We need to abolish the “Zero Tolerance” policies in place to make sure that any agency that replaces it won’t replicate the same immediate issues.

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