After We Abolish ice: A roadmap for just immigration reform

We were told immigration authorities would only arrest and deport convicted criminals.

That was a lie.

On a Wednesday this winter, a 37-year-old US citizen named Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. The following week, immigration authorities killed Alex Pretti in Minnesota. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year. Six have died already this year. That count does not include people killed by ICE and CBP agents like Renee and Alex.

For months now, ICE agents have been showing up in neighborhoods wearing masks, snatching parents from their children without warning or warrant. Students are being imprisoned for things they wrote in their college newspapers. People are being deported to countries they never set foot in. In Maine, ICE detained a Cumberland County Corrections recruit, pulling him out of his car and leaving the engine running in the street.

Here in New Hampshire, the Trump administration secretly planned to convert a building in Merrimack into an ICE detention facility, deliberately avoiding public input or transparency, as confirmed by documents released by the ACLU of New Hampshire.

This is not immigration enforcement. It is state-sanctioned violence, corruption, and the systematic dismantling of constitutional rights. And it demands a serious, structural response.

Here is the case for abolishing ICE and a roadmap for how we build a just, humane, and functional immigration system.

Why ICE Cannot Be Reformed

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was created in 2003 as part of a sweeping reorganization of federal agencies in the wake of September 11th. It was part of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security. From the beginning, its mandate conflated immigration enforcement with national security in ways that have proven to be both ineffective and dangerous.

ICE is not a broken agency that needs fixing. It is an agency whose design produces the outcomes we are now witnessing. When an institution is built to enforce a broken system without due process protections, without meaningful accountability, and with a culture that has consistently shielded agents from consequences for misconduct and killing, reform is insufficient. The institution must be replaced.

The evidence is clear:

• ICE has no meaningful external oversight mechanism. Its inspector general operates within DHS and has a long record of failing to hold agents accountable.

• ICE is the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the US. The agency's budget has grown from roughly $3.3 billion in 2003 to over $10 last year. After the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” ICE has $85 billion at its disposal. Congressional oversight has failed to match the investment with requirements for accountability.

• ICE has a documented history of retaliating against whistleblowers, hiding deaths in custody, and operating detention facilities that violate basic standards of humane treatment.

• The agency has been used as a political tool by multiple administrations. Under the Trump administration, it has become an instrument of terror, surveilling protesters, adding U.S. citizens to watchlists, and killing people with impunity.

Abolishing ICE does not mean abolishing immigration enforcement. It means replacing a failed institution with one that is built from the ground up with civil rights protections, democratic accountability, and a mission that’s oriented toward a functional immigration system rather than fear and punishment.

What Must Happen First: Immediate Congressional Action

Before we can build what comes next, Congress must act now to limit the damage. This is what we fight for:

• Accountability for Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and the 38 people who have died in ICE custody in the past 14 months. Independent inquiries must be launched and those responsible must face justice.

• Repeal of the Laken Riley Act, which paved the way for the deportation-industrial complex by implying a link between criminality and immigration status, and which has been used to justify the detention and deportation of people with no criminal record.

• A moratorium on new ICE detention facilities and contracts with county and state jails, pending the full legislative overhaul described below.

• Defunding ICE's surveillance and protest-intimidation operations, including the use of biometric data, domestic terrorist watchlists, and the no-fly list against people exercising their First Amendment rights.

• A “no” vote on any DHS funding that lacks binding accountability requirements, mandatory body cameras, and enforceable civil rights standards. Funding lawlessness is not compromise, it’s complicity.

What Replaces ICE

New Architecture for Immigration Enforcement

Abolishing ICE requires that Congress replace it with a set of agencies and functions that are narrowly scoped, constitutionally grounded, and democratically accountable. Here is what that architecture can look like:

1. A Civil Immigration Enforcement Agency (CIEA)

A new civil agency, housed outside DHS, should be responsible for enforcing civil immigration law. This includes visa overstays, removal orders, and other non-criminal immigration violations. This agency must be governed by strict due process requirements, including:

• Mandatory warrants for arrests and searches, issued by federal courts — not administrative immigration judges who lack independence from the executive branch.

• Prohibition on masked agents and plain-clothes enforcement operations that terrorize communities.

• Mandatory body cameras with footage uploaded automatically to a publicly accessible, independently managed system.

• Civil rights training requirements, with annual certifications and consequences for non-compliance.

• An independent Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties with subpoena power, that reports directly to Congress.

2. Reconstituted Criminal Immigration Enforcement

Genuine criminal immigration enforcement (human trafficking, smuggling operations, organized crime with a relationship to the border) should be consolidated within existing federal law enforcement agencies with established criminal investigative capacity: the FBI, DEA, and a reconstituted border security function within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). These agencies already have the training, oversight structures, and legal frameworks to handle criminal cases with due process intact.

3. An Independent Immigration Courts System

One of the deepest structural failures of the current system is that immigration judges are employees of the Department of Justice, so they serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General. This is incompatible with judicial independence.

A Democratic Congress should establish an independent Immigration Court system, modeled on the U.S. Tax Court, with judges appointed through a merit-based process, guaranteed tenure, and insulated from political pressure. This alone would transform the quality of due process available to people in immigration proceedings.

4. A Civil Detention Standards and Oversight Board

Any civil immigration detention that continues during the transition period must be governed by a new independent oversight board with the authority to inspect facilities, investigate deaths and abuses, and recommend facility closures. Detention should be the exception, not the rule, and alternatives to detention (ankle monitoring, community supervision, case management) should be the default for people who do not pose a genuine public safety risk.

Building a Just Immigration System

Abolishing ICE is a beginning, not an end. The deeper project is building an immigration system that reflects American values, one that is orderly, fair, humane, and rooted in the rule of law.

Fix the “No Line” Problem

The fundamental flaw in our current immigration system is that it offers no legal pathway for the majority of people who want to come to the United States. Often when I talk with people about the need for immigration reform or hear frustrations about “illegal immigrants,” it’s followed by “they should have waited in line.” In my class at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, students are stunned year after year to learn the history of immigration restrictions in the US and this basic truth: for most people, there is no “line.” Unless someone meets one of a very narrow set of criteria, such as a qualifying family relationship, an employer sponsor, a refugee designation, their only option is to come without authorization.

A just immigration system must create legal pathways that are commensurate with the actual labor and humanitarian demand. That means:

• Expanding visa categories for workers in industries with documented labor shortages, with protections to prevent exploitation and wage suppression.

• Modernizing the family reunification system to reduce the multi-decade backlogs that currently separate families and push people toward unauthorized entry.

• Restoring and expanding asylum protections consistent with our obligations under international law and our own history as a nation of refuge.

• Creating a path to permanent legal status for the approximately 11 million undocumented people currently living in the United States, many of whom have been here for decades, who have built lives, raised children, and contributed to their communities and our communities.

Reinvest in Border Infrastructure

Abolishing ICE does not mean open borders. It means investing in border infrastructure that actually works, including expanding processing capacity, immigration courts, asylum officers, and case management systems that can handle the volume of people seeking to enter the country through legal channels. The backlog of immigration cases exceeds 3 million. That is not a border security failure. It is an institutional failure. It is fixable with better policy and sustained investment.

Restore Relationships with Municipalities and States

The Trump administration has turned local governments into instruments of federal immigration enforcement, coercing police departments, using county jails as detention facilities, and threatening to withhold funding from jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate. This must be stopped and reversed.

A Democratic Congress should codify the right of state and local governments to decline immigration enforcement partnerships, restore federal funding that was withheld as coercion, and establish a new framework for voluntary cooperation based on genuine community safety needs, not political pressure.

Here in New Hampshire, this matters directly. Coercive, unfunded mandates that make local governments complicit in federal lawlessness, and don't even pay for the privilege, are exactly the problem a new framework must solve.

Truth, Accountability, and Repair

A just immigration system cannot be built without reckoning with the harm that has been done. That means:

• Independent investigations into every death in ICE custody. That means, all 32 from last year, all 6 from this year and public findings and accountability for those agents and contractors responsible.

• Compensation for families separated under the Trump administration's family separation policies.

• Repayment to municipalities, counties, medical providers, and states that are owed money by ICE under existing contracts the federal government has refused to honor.

• Restoration of legal status for people deported without due process and a mechanism for return for those who were wrongly removed.

How We Get There

The Political Path

None of this is possible without winning. The same coalition that stopped the proposed Merrimack detention facility, regular people showing up and speaking out, local elected officials refusing to cooperate, state leaders applying pressure, and a federal delegation compelled to act is the coalition that can win back the House of Representatives and our State House in November and create the legislative conditions for actual reform.

Every month, I join faith leaders and immigration activists for a Jericho Walk around the Norris Cotton Federal Building in Manchester, where ICE has its New Hampshire office. After each walk, the Immigrant Solidarity Network meets to educate, strategize, and organize. This is how sustained political change is built: not from viral moments, but from people showing up together, month after month, refusing to quit.

The Trump administration and Governor Ayotte didn’t abandon their plans for the Merrimack facility because they had a change of heart. They abandoned them because of sustained, coordinated pressure that made the political cost too high. That same pressure, organized and channeled into electoral power, is how we win in November.

Legislative Priorities in the First 100 Days of a Democratic House

A Democratic House majority, working with a Senate and executive willing to negotiate, should move immediately on:

1. The GRACE Act: establishing a minimum annual refugee admissions floor.

2. The New Way Forward Act: eliminating mandatory detention, restoring judicial discretion in deportation cases, and creating a path to return for people wrongly deported.

3. The ICE Accountability Act: establishing the independent oversight board, mandatory body cameras, and warrant requirements for civil immigration arrests.

4. Comprehensive immigration reform legislation: addressing the visa backlog, creating new legal pathways, and establishing a Civil Immigration Enforcement Agency to replace ICE.

None of this will be easy. The immigration debate has been poisoned by decades of bad faith, political cowardice, and the deliberate conflation of immigration with criminality. But the ground has shifted. The cruelty of the current moment has clarified something for millions of Americans: this is not about border security. It is about who we are as a country.

Change is coming because of the sustained work of people who refuse to accept that what we’re living through was inevitable or will be permanent. Activists, faith leaders, local officials, and ordinary people have been showing up, speaking out, and building the political conditions for something better.

I am running for Congress because local action, as necessary as it is, can only go so far. The comprehensive reform this country needs to abolish ICE and build a just system in its place, to create legal pathways to citizenship that reflect both our values and our reality, requires legislative power.

This is my answer to the question: Would I abolish ICE? This is what I would do. And I intend to go to Washington to do it.