Every Democratic candidate in 2026, from dog catcher to state senate to Congress, should make abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, a part of their platform.
Masked ICE agents, who’ve been emboldened by President Donald Trump, have been rampaging through the streets of the United States: snatching people — including U.S. citizens — and harassing whole communities. And now we’ve recoiled in horror at the sight of ICE agent Jonathan Ross killing Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good. Her killing represents a seminal moment in American politics, and if Democrats can’t seize this moment politically and morally, then they shouldn’t even call themselves an opposition party.
The biggest swings during midterm elections happen when there is a clear message on where voters should focus their anger.
The biggest political swings during midterm elections happen when there is an obvious bad guy or at least a clear message on where voters should focus their anger. From Ken Starr’s witch hunt against President Bill Clinton to President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” stunt in Iraq to the 2010 “shellacking” that followed President Barack Obama’s poor rollout of the Affordable Care Act, voters are often driven by anger at a particular issue and the president responsible for it.
Trump isn’t popular, and it’s with his blessing that ICE is doing what it’s doing, providing Democrats the perfect combination of an unpopular president and a big government issue people hate.
A recent poll from The Economist/YouGov conducted between Jan. 9 and Jan. 12 shows 46% of Americans support abolishing ICE — not reforming ICE, not improving ICE but actually abolishing ICE. To put that in context: More Americans want to abolish ICE than want to abolish the IRS, and the IRS has a 120-year head start on making Americans angry. A full 52% of Americans in a Jan. 7 YouGov poll said ICE is too forceful, and in a Marist College poll in June, 54% said ICE has gone “too far” in deportation actions. Most of those polls were conducted before Ross pulled out a cell phone camera to his fatal encounter with Good.
However, when I asked Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin directly in October, “Why won’t Democrats run against ICE in the 2026 midterms?” he offered a word salad sprinkled with maybe later dressing. Much has happened since then, including Ross killing Good, but even in the aftermath of that killing, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sidestepped questions about whether they’d support efforts to slash funding for ICE. Schumer and Jeffries appear to only favor more strongly worded letters and have thus far resisted efforts to make ICE restrictions part of budget negotiations.
Democrats are afraid of being labeled the “Defund the Police” party, but that concern is overblown. ICE isn’t the police. It’s something else entirely.
If I were to ask you to name your favorite cop show or procedural, depending on your age, you might say anything from “Hill Street Blues” to “Law & Order,” or from “Brooklyn 99” to “NCIS.” Reforming the police has been so difficult politically in part because pop culture is inundated with images of good, noble — and often sexy — cops. But ICE, which is only 20 years old, has no such grip on American culture. There’s no copaganda out there for ICE, no post-George Floyd viral videos of ICE agents dancing with migrant kids in detention camps and we don’t have an ICE equivalent of Bobby Nash. The majority of America’s impression of ICE comes from viral social media videos of agents dressed like a combination of Paul Blart and Marvel cosplayers tear gassing people, accosting vendors on the street and grabbing men and women on their way in or out of court.
Popular culture has no ICE heroes.
Popular culture has no ICE heroes. There are no major crimes ICE has been known to solve — or even address — that voters would care about. Thus, Democrats don’t need to be so worried about voters being offended if they called to abolish the agency. Democrats can call for immigration enforcement without ICE and help voters understand why doing so would not be a contradiction.
Combine that with numerous reports that ICE agents are out of shape and can barely pass qualifying exams. Combine that with the news that many get six-figure salaries, $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness. It gives Democrats a perfect midterm combination of bad government and presidential unpopularity. Democrats must make sure that Republicans own ICE these midterms. The calls to abolish ICE can’t come just from the far left, as it did in 2018 when only Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, would dare say those words in public. We need to hear “Abolish ICE” from all Democrats as a good government, public safety and resistance message. Every purple district in America should be microtargeted with videos of Ross killing Good and be reminded that Trump’s DOJ is reportedly choosing not to even investigate that shooting, as is typical. Every low-turnout district in Texas and Georgia should be flooded with ads about Keith Porter being killed by an off-duty ICE agent, who’s faced no consequences. Every ad about affordability should be tagged with headlines about ICE agent bonuses while Trump blocks health care subsidies. Regardless of the original intent of ICE, Trump has essentially made it a secret police force, and Democrats shouldn’t hesitate to say that the U.S. ought not have a secret police force. There is no facet of American life that ICE activities haven’t affected in a negative way. It’s not only a political slam dunk to run on abolishing ICE, but Democrats also have a moral obligation to do so. All they need is backbone and courage. But unfortunately, those are traits American voters have long been begging them to show.
Jason Johnson
Dr. Jason Johnson is a politics and culture analyst and a professor of Political Science at Hiram College. He covers issues from the profane to the profound, and specializes in the "Politics Of…." from the labor politics of the Donald Sterling scandal to the international politics of President Obama’s oil and gas policy. He is the author of the book “Political Consultants & Campaigns: One Day to Sell”, written for HuffingtonPost, the Grio, the New York Post and has been quoted by The Hill, The Wall Street Journal, Black Enterprise and ESPN. He earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When he's not watching or breaking news he can be found at DragonCon, is a long time Miami Heat fan and a long suffering Philadelphia Eagles fan. 
