How ICE's Success Made It Unfixable

ICE just had the best year in its history. The agency made 320,000 arrests in 2025 — triple the prior year's 111,000 — and has already logged 356,389 removals in fiscal 2026 ^[1][2]. Its budget has swollen to $85 billion, making it the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in the country ^[3]. Its workforce has more than doubled, from 10,000 officers to 22,000, with 200,000 applications flooding in and $50,000 signing bonuses on offer ^[3][4]. By every metric the administration set for it, ICE is succeeding. And the political response to that success is a movement to abolish the agency. This is not a story about an agency failing to enforce the law. It is a story about an agency whose enforcement model has made it ungovernable — and about the mechanism designed to protect it that ended up making abolition the most prominent political response left. The chain begins with a number. Shortly after returning to office, President Trump personally raised the national daily arrest quota from 1,000 to 3,000 ^[5]. Regional directors translated that into local targets — in Oregon, the daily goal became 30, and arrests surged from 113 to 1,100 in a single year ^[5]. The White House pressed career DHS officials to hit the numbers, creating turmoil as officials resisted targets they considered operationally unrealistic ^[6]. ICE met the quota by cutting corners everywhere. The training pipeline for new agents was compressed from five months to roughly eight weeks, with a former instructor testifying that critical instruction on firearms safety, use of force, and protesters' rights was stripped out ^[7]. Some recruits began working on temporary status before their background checks were complete ^[7]. The agency borrowed 28,000 federal law enforcement personnel from other agencies — 84 percent of IRS Criminal Investigation, 70 percent of the DEA — to fill out its ranks ^[8]. And it authorized agents to enter private homes using administrative warrants issued by DHS officials rather than judges, placing the agency's home-entry standard below the Fourth Amendment threshold that applies to local police ^[9]. The numbers came, but they came from the wrong people. In Los Angeles, 39 percent of detainees had no criminal charges at all ^[1]. In Minnesota's Operation Metro Surge, more than 60 percent of the 3,700-plus people arrested had no criminal record ^[1]. In Oregon, only 32 percent of those arrested had criminal convictions, down from 45 percent the year before ^[5]. The quota was being met by sweeping up non-criminals to fill the count. San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert named the mechanism directly.

When monetary incentives, arrest or deportation quotas, and systemic disregard for constitutional protections are part of the system, it becomes clear this isn't about legitimate law enforcement or public safety. — Marni von Wilpert

The human cost followed the logic of the numbers. Two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, were shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis ^[10]. Over 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office, with four deaths in a single week this July ^[10][2]. In Maine, an ICE officer with a domestic violence history and a judicial firearms forfeiture order was cleared through vetting and fatally shot a legal U.S. resident — prompting border czar Tom Homan himself to ask how the vetting process failed ^[11].

How … did the vetting process fail? — Tom Homan

Nationwide protests erupted in January, with New York City Mayor Mamdani accusing ICE of "abducting neighbors whose only crime was just trying to live a decent life" ^[12]. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called the federal deployment "a campaign of organized brutality" and a "federal occupation of Minnesota" that "long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement" ^[13]. The state sued, arguing that 3,000 immigration agents deployed there constituted an unconstitutional occupation violating the Tenth Amendment ^[13]. At this point, Senate Democrats reached for the tool the Constitution gives Congress to force accountability: the power of the purse. They blocked the FY2026 DHS funding bill, triggering what became a 76-day shutdown — the longest in U.S. history ^[14]. Their demands were not radical. Thirty-eight senators, led by Angus King, called for body cameras on ICE agents, judicial warrants for home entries, an end to roving patrols, and mandatory agency branding on uniforms — basic accountability measures that local police departments already meet ^[15]. Republicans responded by removing the lever. In May, they passed the Secure America Act through budget reconciliation — a process that requires only 50 votes and bypasses the filibuster — funding ICE through September 2029 with no oversight strings attached ^[14]. The bill gave the agency $70 billion with what House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called "no oversight, no accountability and no guardrails" ^[14]. Trump said the quiet part aloud.

This morning I'm thrilled to sign the Secure America Act to immediately and fully fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of my term, so we won't have to be talking about it anymore. — Donald Trump

The admission was precise: the multi-year appropriation was designed to remove immigration enforcement from congressional oversight entirely. Senator King identified the structural consequence.

One of the major ways that you hold federal agencies accountable is the power of the purse, and one of the difficulties here is that my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate earlier this year funded ICE through the end of Donald Trump's term. — Kane

The funding lock-in did not just protect ICE. It foreclosed the moderate alternative. Democrats like Rosa DeLauro had been clear that they were not seeking abolition — "Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot be abolished, but I will not provide a single dime of funding until we see radical changes" — and Senators Warren and Coons introduced an ICE Accountability Act to create an independent watchdog commission ^[16]. Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar insisted the party's position was to "reimagine how we spend resources within that agency and have robust accountability and oversight for their operations" ^[17]. These reform proposals persisted. But without the funding lever to force them into law, they had no mechanism to become binding — and the shutdown that had given Democrats their leverage was over. What happened next was predictable. With the conventional reform path blocked, abolition moved from the Democratic fringe to the mainstream. Governor JB Pritzker, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are all campaigning on abolition ahead of the midterms ^[18]. A March YouGov poll found 50 percent of U.S. adults supporting the elimination of ICE ^[18]. A July Rasmussen survey found 52 percent of likely voters viewing the agency unfavorably, and 68 percent of Democrats saying they would vote for candidates who pledge to abolish it ^[19]. California lawmakers introduced the GTFO ICE Bill, which would bar ICE agents from future public employment in the state ^[20]. The Freeze ICE Act, introduced in Congress, would prohibit federal funds from hiring or transferring personnel into the agency ^[20]. But the movement's momentum does not mean it has won. The internal Democratic opposition is real. Strategist Neera Tanden warned that candidates in Florida, Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska need "a posture on crime that neutralizes the attacks that will come" ^[18]. Centrist Democrat Angie Craig cautioned that "we have to improve the way that people see us in terms of our ability to keep our community safe" ^[21]. Third Way warned the slogan could alienate swing voters the way "defund the police" did in 2020 ^[22]. And 74 percent of Pennsylvania swing voters still see illegal immigration as a priority for the president to resolve ^[22]. The public objects to ICE's methods, not to enforcement itself. Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota's lieutenant governor, captured the distinction that defines the abolition movement's most politically viable form.

We need a system to enforce immigration laws in this country, but ICE has completely lost the trust of the American people, and they continue to act in ways that are illegal and unconstitutional. — Peggy Flanagan

That framing — replace the broken vehicle, don't eliminate the function — is what separates the mainstream abolition argument from its caricature. But it is also what makes the Republican funding lock-in so consequential. By removing the power of the purse as a tool for incremental reform, the Secure America Act ensured that the only way to change ICE's behavior is to change the agency itself. The mechanism designed to protect ICE from Congress is what made it impossible to fix through Congress. The agency succeeded at its mission, and the structure built to shield that success is what made it ungovernable.