'Abolish ICE' calls lethal for Dems?
By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA Today Network
..... In the wake of the violent immigration crackdowns in Minneapolis and elsewhere, veteran voices within the Democratic Party are urging candidates to avoid defiant, anger - and even cathartic - calls to "abolish ICE."
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"The impulse is emotional. The slogan is simple," wrote Sarah Pierce and Lanae Erickson for the ThirdWay, a centrist Democratic Party think tank last month. [01/2026] "But politically it's lethal."
..... It's a piece of advice advice hat has shadowed the early campaign for Congress in New Jersey.
.... In recent weeks, Democratic candidates have grappled with just how far they can go in harnessing public anger over the violent, judicial conduct of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the armed and masked par-military nit that has led Trump's deportation campaign.
..... There are those, such as Analilia Mejia, the Glen Ridge activist whose stunning victory in the spectacle primary election on February 5 [2026] in the 11th Congressional District, who have not hesitated to call for the abolishing of ICE.
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The chant "Abolish ICE!" erupted at a rally in January [2026] featuring U.S. Sean tor Bernie Sanders.
..... Mejia has not taken her foot off the pedal since capturing the nomination.
..... "We have to turn off the spigot. We cannot continue to fund an entity that is completely, wildly out of control," Mejia said in a post-victory press conference in Montclair earlier this month. [02/2026] "It is unconscionable that we would take money out of people's mouths, food out of people;s mouths, in order to fund a rogue police force that is turning its weapons against the American people."
..... Anti-ICE rhetoric also has emerged among the Democrats in the primary for the 7th Congressional District, a moderation mix of affluent suburbs and rural counties that Trump carried by 1 percentage point in the 2024 presidential election.
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"The fact that we have masked, unidentified federal agents that are literally murdering Americans in broad daylight, is literally unacceptable," said Rebecca Bennett, a Democrat and former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot during a candidate forum in Mendham. "It was not allowed in a war zone and it most certainly will not be allowed on American soil."
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On one level, it is hardly surprising that Democrats are ratcheting up their "abolish ICE: rally cry amid the public uproar over ICE in Minneapolis, where two protesters were shot and killed by agents. The Trump administration's attempts to deflect blame by describing the victims as "domestic terrorists" turbocharged the national outrage.
.... Although Trump officials have dramatically scaled back ICE's presence in Minneapolis, the administration has not pulled back from its national deportation campaign, which includes the apparent purchase of a Morris County warehouse for a detention facility. Officials now deny purchasing it.
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Despite the Trump retreat, the tide of public opinion has turned on ICE. A recent Marist College poll found that more than 65% of the public believes ICE has "gone too far." that represents an 11-point increase from last June. [2025] That kind of public discontent has given Democrats the comfort to attack ICE on the campaign trail with impunity - for now.
..... "I believe we should abolish ICE," said Shanel Y. Robinson, a candidate for the blue-leaning 12th Congressional District, during a candidate's forum in Princeton on February 15. [2026] "No more funding. We're at a point that cannot be reformed."
..... The "Abolish ICE: backlash has echoes of the "defend the police" rally cry adopted by some Democrats on the left in 2020 after the slaying of Gorge Floyd by a Minneapolis officer. but Republicans attacked many "defend the police" Democrats running in swing districts that year as too far out of the mainstream and weak on crime. That experience led veteran Democratic strategists James Carville to declare "defend the police" as the "threes stupidest words in the English language" and is the root of the Third Way's cautionary warning.
..... Yet, some observers and candidates argue that there are vast differences between the "defund police' of six years ago and the anti-ICE outcry to today. [02/20/2026]
..... For one thing, police are far more popular with the public than ICE. police have deep roots in communities spanning generations: ICE was cerated in 2003, part of a post-9/11 overhaul of national security. But more importantly, it operated relatively below the radar until trump tapped the agency to lead his deportation dragnet.
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For many Americans, it's the first time they have become aware of ICE and, for the most part, they are horrified at that they see - m,asked men with battle-ready equipment, accosting protesters and dragging immigrants form homes and workplaces without juridical warrants and whisking them away without due process. And it is no longer an abstraction for many voters - ICE raids are hitting small towns and worksites as well as cities.
..... There are people on both sides of the aisle who think this is a complete federal government overreach, and you can't have, essentially, Trump private army marching it say into these cities and creating havoc," said Sue Altman, a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 12th congressional District. the district's current member of Congress, Bonnie Watson Coleman, is retiring.
..... Yet, voters remain strongly supportive of border security and support immigration enforcement as long as it is dun fairly and within the confines of constitutional norms. That board sentiment has prompted the new "Abolish ICE" Democrats to balance their attack by calling for a responsible revamping of immigration enforcement.
..... They are calling for better training and body cameras; banning masks, requiring judicial warrants and other reforms that are also part of the Congressional Democrats; demand in exchange for support for funding the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
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"Democrats are trying to run this gauntlet where they want to say, "Yeah, ICE is abusive, ICE is bad, we need to stop doing that,' " said Dan Cassino, director of the PublicMind Poll at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "But they also know that immigration enforcement is not necessarily that unpopular."
..... ICE, says Altman, has "completely gone off the rails. It is so far beyond the pale. We need to ... start over and fit into a better immigration system."
..... Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, D-Mercer, who also is competing for the Democratic nonstaining in the 12th district, added: "I'm not just saying we want to defend it. I believe we have to look at how to make it right. I believe that we need those countability measures. We need oversight."
..... Even Mejia, the most strident anti-ICE candidate in the field, is calling for sweeping reforms. She wants to "claw back" some $75 billion appropriated last year [2025] for ICE and redirect it for other social needs. She wants to ban ICE agents from collecting data on peaceful protesters and eliminating "qualified immunity" for ICE officers, which shields them from lawsuits.
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"That does not mean open borders," she added. "That does not mean a non-existent system, because guess what? "We're a nation of immigrants and in order to bring people into the fabric of this nation, we do have to have a fair process, but it has to be free of violence, it has to be free of the surveillance, and it has to uphold our constitutional rights."