Democrats Try to Harness ‘Abolish ICE’ Movement’s Energy, But Not Its Goal

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Sen. Chris Murphy is one of those lawmakers who picks his words carefully. He is not the type to blindly rush into a slogan of the hour. So when the Connecticut Democrat navigated the crowd of hundreds gathered outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in downtown D.C. Tuesday evening’s rush hour to mark the one-week anniversary of an officer shooting and killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Murphy stuck to the thoughtfully crafted policy package he felt properly met the moment.

“This is a nation that is defined by our immigrant present and our immigrant future,” said Murphy, whose laundry list of reforms include keeping Border Patrol on the border, banning agents from wearing masks during operations and requiring them to wear identification, obtain warrants for arrests, and holster guns while on civil matters. They were the kind of pragmatic steps that might actually get to the President’s desk by the Jan. 30 funding deadline.

“You should demand that we make sure that this appropriations process is used to make ICE comply with the law,” said Murphy, who is the top Democrat on an appropriations subcommittee that handles the Department of Homeland Security’s piggybank. He added: “And I see a lot of signs out there, not one additional dime for ICE in this budget.”

Almost immediately, the crowd erupted in a chant that was not at all what Murphy was pitching: “Defund ICE” came the cry.

Thus illustrates Democrats’ challenge at this charged moment: responding to their base while not allowing themselves to get pulled further left than they deem prudent.

There is a good reason for Democrats to want their party leaders to focus on this issue. The latest YouGov/ Economist poll finds that efforts by Trump and his allies to dismiss Good’s death are not working. A full 50% of Americans say the killing by ICE was not justified, compared to just 30% who said it was.

But that doesn’t mean “Abolish ICE” is suddenly a winning election strategy. The view of the agency is more of a mixed bag, with 43% saying they want to abolish the agency and 46% saying they want to keep it—meaning Democrats’ lingering calls to scrap it are far less popular than self-selecting social media would suggest. And when asked if they would support a generic Democratic candidate or a Republican one, Democrats enjoyed just a 6 point advantage, 39% to 33%, in the YouGov survey. (A separate Gallup survey shows Democrats in a stronger position—perhaps even better than they were at this point heading into the 2018 midterms.)

At the rally Tuesday evening, Murphy’s multipronged proposal was one of many policy remedies offered to a crowd itching to rein in ICE. Sen. Alex Padilla of California pitched a measure that would hold officers accountable and deny their immunity claims that they were just doing their jobs. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland promoted a budget that gives “not one more dime for Donald Trump’s ICE operations.” Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida said he was already a firm no on any Homeland Security spending bill. “We don’t want ICE just out of Minneapolis, but we want ICE out of all of our communities. We must ensure that we use every tool in our toolbox, which includes voting no on the DHS appropriations bill. No more funding for terrorizing our communities. No more funding for killing our people,” Frost said.

It’s a range, for sure, reaching from Murphy’s reforms for ICE to the easier-to-distill promise just to scrap the operation altogether. 

The problem here for Democrats is one that has plagued them since Barack Obama left office at the start of 2017: there is no unifying leader who defines the party. Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer are skilled at leading on Capitol Hill but not nationally. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took the role because they were unifying against Trump. Dynamos like Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna have mastered the ability to whip up the progressive wing of the party—and draw backlash immediately from the middle, as was the case this week when centrist think tank Third Way got into a quick skirmish with Warren over a policy speech she delivered on Monday that it described as “supersized Bidenism 2.0.” Soon after, Third Way also told Democrats to ditch any mentions of “abolish ICE.”

So as protesters lined up on the sidewalk and eventually spilled into a closed city street late Tuesday in a show of peaceful opposition to ICE, they did so without much more than a collective need to see something happen. At their core, though, there was zero agreement about what that should look like. Democrats may find itself spending much of the midterms debating how much their voters want them to try and limit ICE, while Republicans try to paint them all as “Abolish ICE” anarchists. After all, Democrats did themselves no favors with promises to Defund the Police, yet they seem to be preparing a sequel.