Ever since an ICE agent fatally shot a 37-year-old activist during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, protests against the federal agency have increased in the city, with more people, more violence, and, in turn, more agents swarming the streets. As Minneapolis teeters on the brink of chaos, people across the country are trotting out derogatory signs and shouting “abolish ICE.” Democratic lawmakers are also calling for reform, demanding that ICE be defunded or eliminated. The movement is growing, with no signs of slowing down, but it didn’t start in Minnesota. It’s been simmering for years.
A New ICE Age
In a Twitter post in February 2017, shortly after President Donald Trump entered the White House for his first term, a political activist and self-described socialist named Sean McElwee generated hundreds of retweets with a post that included “abolish ICE.” Others on the platform had used the words before, but his post was the first to take off, sparking a rallying cry that Democrats soon adopted.
In March 2018, McElwee wrote a lengthy article in The Nation titled “It’s Time to Abolish ICE.” Around the same time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embraced the slogan while campaigning against and upsetting long-time incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley (D) in the congressional primaries. Within the same week of AOC’s shocking triumph, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) told Chris Cuomo on CNN that ICE should be eliminated. “Start over,” she said, “reimagine it and build something that actually works.” A week or so later, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) introduced a bill to terminate the agency, supported by Democratic Reps. Earl Blumenauer (OR), Pramila Jayapal (WA), and Jim McGovern (MA). The party’s stance on immigration was quickly changing, and anybody not on board or who voted to establish ICE in 2002 was criticized.
Was this all because Trump, in his usual style, took off the gloves when he entered the White House in 2017? He signed an executive order within his first week, instructing government agencies to deport all “removable aliens.” Months later, the number of people trying to cross the border plummeted, and removals inside the country increased by about 25% for fiscal year 2017, according to the agency’s annual report. Arrests by ICE increased by 30% in the same year and continued to climb in fiscal 2018. All this, combined with stories about families being separated, might’ve helped spark the outrage. Of course, the fact that Trump was president likely contributed to the backlash, but he wasn’t doing anything all that different from his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Still, the summer of 2018 saw protests erupt nationwide, calling for an end to ICE. Then, like now, it seemed to come out of nowhere, as if the backlash was only a response to Trump’s efforts. But the frustrations over immigration were widespread before Trump first entered the Oval Office.
The Shift
Outrage over immigration laws and enforcement had been building since ICE was created in 2002, but March 2006 marked a turning point when around 500,000 protesters walked the streets of Los Angeles to express their anger with new legislation that the House had recently passed, which aimed to make it a felony to live illegally in the United States. Denver, Charlotte, Sacramento, Milwaukee, and Phoenix had also experienced massive demonstrations in the same week, a majority of which were organized and led by illegal immigrants.
A month later, another nationwide round of protests occurred, with people demanding comprehensive immigration reform. They were unhappy with President George W. Bush ordering workplace raids and ramping up deportation efforts. Though he had proposed a guest worker program to give temporary legal status for some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, leftists didn’t like the idea because they thought it would create an underclass of foreign workers.
It wasn’t long before the Democratic Party’s stance on immigration began shifting further left. In 2008, its platform discussed the need to secure the country’s borders, as it had in the past, but it now wanted “humane” immigration reform. By 2016, its platform on immigration focused on helping immigrants, creating more paths to citizenship, lowering barriers, ending certain raids, deporting fewer people, and allowing the illegal immigrants who worked and contributed to their communities to stay in the United States as citizens.
Even Obama received a lot of backlash from Democrats. In August 2011, protesters marched through the streets to express their disapproval with the expansion of Secure Communities, a program started under George W. Bush that required other law enforcement agencies to share biometric data with ICE. That he was deporting more people than George W. did not go unnoticed. Obama was even dubbed the Deporter-in-Chief, averaging around 400,000 total DHS removals each year from 2009 to 2014. By 2016, numerous Democratic lawmakers were lashing out at the president for using what some called “harsh tactics.”
By the time Trump took over the presidency in 2017, the left had already spent a solid decade chanting and waving signs criticizing immigration policies as Democratic lawmakers followed their lead and became advocates for illegal immigrants. Abolish ICE eventually fizzled and then disappeared once Joe Biden won the White House and neglected the southern border.
With Trump’s return in 2025, it was only a matter of time before the movement surfaced again. Yet the president’s average approval rating on immigration is 45.9%, 3.5% less than his disapproval, according to Liberty Nation News’ polling aggregate, the Public Square. So clearly, he is doing something that numerous Americans like. Perhaps when a handful of people get all hopped up on emotions, make a ruckus in the streets, and throw violent tantrums, it might be best to ignore them and remember that America is much bigger than one city. At some point, they’ll probably see something shiny and move on, with Democrats right behind them.
