In Fairness, “Reconstitute ICE So That Internal Border Enforcement Can Be Done in a Professional Manner by an Agency That Has the Public’s Trust” Is a Bad Slogan
But it's probably good policy
The “Abolish ICE” slogan was always maddeningly vague. At the height of “Abolish ICE,” I had a 30-minute conversation with a coworker who favored abolishing ICE, and his position seemed to be: The notion that progressives support open borders is a slanderous Republican talking point, but deporting people is always cruel, and ICE are bad at their job, but nobody should have their job, so ICE should be dutifly reformed and then abolished and replaced by nothing but suggesting that ending enforcement is tantamount to open borders is slander most foul.
Why would anyone promote a slogan with no clear meaning? Well, that particular bug can be a feature: It facilitates “motte and bailey” arguments, which my coworker was making when he insisted that obviously he wasn’t for open borders, but also couldn’t name any circumstance under which a person should ever be deported. Short slogans also fit into hashtags, which was crucial in the 2010s. The dumbing down of our national dialogue has many causes, but we should probably not overlook the impact of Twitter’s 140 character constraint, which increased the utility of short, pithy slogans like “abolish ICE”, “make America great again”, “build the wall”, “lock her up”, “defund the police”, “drain the swamp”, and — less ominously — “I’m lovin’ it.”
The need for ICE reform has become abundantly clear. Whatever the agency once was, it is now something America can’t have, which is a largely unaccountable force associated with a particular political faction. 51 percent of Americans think ICE is making cities less safe — only 31 percent say the opposite — and Democrats who were never Abolish ICE types like Ruben Gallego are calling for reform. I feel for the ICE agents who really are dedicated professionals; they probably feel that a wave of weirdo hacks showed up and ruined the thing they’re been working at their whole lives. And all I can say to that is: 1) Yes, that sucks, but it’s also what happened, and 2) I worked in late night comedy in the 2010s, so I feel your pain.
