Abolish ICE

1AC - Plan
The United States Federal Government should abolish Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
 1AC – Advantage
ADVANTAGE ONE IS AGRICULTURE
US agriculture is on the brink of total collapse – undocumented immigrants are critical
to the entire supply chain
DiMare 20 [Paul DiMare, president and CEO of DiMare Fresh and co-chair of the
American Business Immigration Coalition and IMPAC Fund, June 8, 2020. “The future of
our food supply relies on immigrant farm workers.” https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-
blog/politics/501658-the-future-of-our-food-supply-relies-on-immigrant-farm-workers]
The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally transformed our way of life-- how we work, how we celebrate, how we grieve. But one thing
remains constant: we still need to put food on the table for our families, and we rely on millions of immigrant
workers to do that. Yet even as food pantries are struggling to serve Americans lined up for miles, crops sit unpicked in the
field rotting. The problem isn’t the farmers. We support sound and coherent immigration policies, especially ones that
strengthen and stabilize our food supply chains. The problem is a lack of political will. The shortage of farm workers is nothing
new. Even before COVID-19, the agricultural sector was already experiencing extreme labor scarcity. But
the pandemic has certainly raised the stakes. Public health concerns and agricultural labor shortages have
left many farms on the brink of collapse, jeopardizing our ability to move crops from the fields to the
markets that need them. As the former chairman of the Florida Tomato Committee and one of the largest grower of fresh-market
tomatoes in the U.S., I have always been aware of the critical contributions that immigrants make to our economy and workforce. A
substantial 53 percent of current farm workers were born outside the country. Many of them are also
undocumented, with little protection, and no path to work authorization . They do hard work in harsh conditions –
jobs that, frankly, many Americans will not take. The key to addressing our current labor shortages lies not only in
maintaining a robust guest worker program, but also in repairing our broken immigration system so as to protect our
existing farm workers and farms. Some suggest that these agricultural jobs should be reserved for the over 40 million American
workers currently out of a job due to the pandemic. This sounds great in theory, but the reality is that the majority of unemployed
Americans will not fill these open positions. Most lack either the skill or an interest in back-breaking
agricultural labor. We know this because, in the ten weeks since America largely shut down, our ability to find people to bring in our
crops has become more difficult, not easier. This fact was highlighted in a recent letter from prominent Republican Senators, including Lindsey
Graham (S.C.) and Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), urging President Trump to not restrict the worker visas that many industries essential to the
COVID-19 response rely on. They understand that if our tenuous food supply chain breaks down, it will be
devastating at all levels, and it will severely hamper our country’s ability to recover post-COVID. In the wake of this unprecedented
crisis, there are signs that the government may agree. Undocumented farm workers across the nation have received
letters from the Department of Homeland Security identifying them as “essential workers,” and ICE has
stated that the agency will be focusing their enforcement activities on “ public safety risks”, which
presumably do not include farm workers. But we need more than letters from DHS that, at best, only
serve as a temporary reprieve from deportation for undocumented farm workers . We need common-sense
policies that sustainably increase access to a documented agricultural workforce, preserve our existing experienced
workforce and protect our immigrant farm workers.

We’ll isolate two internal links –

First is disease – Deportation fears are the key factor deterring immigrants from
healthcare – that ensures a COVID spiral
Luthi et al 20 [Susannah Luthi, Renuka Rayasam, and Alice Ollstein, Politico journalists,
March 17, 2020. “Trump's immigration crackdown could hurt coronavirus containment
efforts.” https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/17/trump-immigration-coronavirus-
134112]
The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration could scare their communities from seeking out care
for coronavirus, potentially hastening the spread of a deadly outbreak that’s growing rapidly in the United
States, advocates and public health groups are warning. Those serving immigrant populations have reported
significant drop-offs in immigrants seeking health care during Donald Trump’s presidency over fears of his
administration’s tough enforcement measures. Immigration advocates and health care providers in some parts of the country
say there are signs the novel coronavirus is already spreading in immigrant communities , intensifying efforts to
fortify the populations against the highly contagious disease. Marco Trujillo, who handles immigrant outreach for a health care coalition in
Cincinnati, says he’s fielded questions on coronavirus from dozens of people in the past few days. At least two of those people told him they
had symptoms consistent with the virus but refused his pleas to contact a doctor. “They didn’t want to go
to the hospital because they are afraid, because of their immigration status," said Trujillo, a member of
Cincinnati’s Central Community Health Board. “They don't even want to give their information to a doctor .” Democrats
have steadily warned that Trump’s immigration policies could undermine efforts to detect and stamp out the
virus that’s effectively shuttered large sections of American life. Joe Biden in Sunday night’s Democratic debate,
decrying Trump’s policies, said even “xenophobic folks” should want undocumented immigrants to seek out care for coronavirus without fear
of deportation. “It’s even in their interest that that woman come forward or that man come forward because it deals with keeping the spread
from moving more rapidly,” Biden said. Mary’s Center, a Washington-area health care nonprofit predominately serving Latino immigrants, said
it’s starting to see potential cases of coronavirus among its patients, though it’s still awaiting results on the limited number of tests they’ve run.
Executive Director Maria Gomez said she’s less concerned the center’s patients will be afraid to access care —
the center is known and trusted in the immigrant community — and worried more about economic upheaval that’s already affecting
their hourly wage jobs. She worries pressures to stay employed and avoid scrutiny of immigration officials will push
immigrants to keep working even if they’re infected, increasing the chance of spreading coronavirus to
others. “How will they pay the rent?” Gomez said. “They’re afraid to go get any help now because they were just working very hard to make
ends meet.” Some lawmakers have called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend immigration raids and arrests around hospitals
and medical clinics amid the outbreak. The immigration enforcement agency, responding to concerns around coronavirus, said it "does not
conduct operations at medical facilities, except under extraordinary circumstances." Public
health experts say fears of seeking
out care are very real among immigrants — and the clinicians who serve them. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist
who studied a 2018 outbreak of mumps in an immigrant community in Pennsylvania, found the outbreak was exacerbated by dozens of people
who were undocumented immigrants and legal immigrants without insurance avoiding medical care. Doctors
in the area also
hesitated to order lab tests or report potential cases out of concern their patients could be reported to
immigration authorities.

Uncontrolled COVID outbreaks in undocumented communities will demolish US

agriculture – guarantees unprecedented food shortages
Willingham and Mathema 20 [Zoe Willingham, research associate for the Economic
Policy team at the Center for American Progress; Silva Mathema, associate director of
policy on the Immigration Policy team at the Center, April 23, 2020. “Protecting
Farmworkers From Coronavirus and Securing the Food Supply.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2020/04/23/483488/prote
cting-farmworkers-coronavirus-securing-food-supply/]
With millions of workers staying at home to aid public health efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19, the security of America’s
food supply and its supply chains has rarely been more important. At this moment, to the extent that there is a
challenge in ensuring America’s grocery stores have enough healthy food on the shelves, it comes not from insufficient natural bounty but
instead from the extraordinary burdens that COVID-19 has placed on the many low-wage workers who play such central roles in the functioning
of food supply chains. Indeed, during these trying times, farmworkers’ contributions in particular are more critical
than ever. They cannot shelter at home to remain safe from COVID-19; instead, they must go to work—along
with meatpacker employees, truckers, and grocery store workers— to ensure that the nation’s food supply is maintained .
Farmworkers are particularly vulnerable to illness because of high rates of respiratory disease being an
occupational hazard, low rates of health insurance coverage, and often substandard living and working
conditions.1 Despite these risk factors, agricultural workers—the majority of whom are immigrants and about half of whom are
undocumented—lack many of the legal protections enjoyed by most workers, which endangers their own and their families’ health and well-
being.2 The
pandemic’s disruption of normal economic activity is clearly illustrating how crucial farmworkers are
to national security and food access around the world . The European Union is already feeling the effect of tightened
borders on the supply of farm labor. Farmers in the United Kingdom and Germany are reporting labor shortages, and the agricultural minister
of France recently urged professionals in the industries that have been locked down to seek out work on farms.3 Yet farmers worry that the
new workers they do recruit domestically will lack the skills necessary to efficiently harvest crops without
damaging them. Travel and immigration bans enacted in the United States and around the world have put
stress on a preexisting shortage of farm labor.4 To supplement the domestic labor supply, many farms in the United States
often rely upon the H-2A program to hire seasonal agricultural workers from other countries.5 In 2019, the United States issued more than
200,000 H-2A visas—accounting for about 10 percent of the agricultural workforce.6 Overall, including the significant share of
undocumented immigrants who have for decades been the backbone of this nation’s agricultural labor
force, 53 percent of farmworkers were born outside the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).7 Last month, the
U.S. Department of State announced that it would stop processing visas in Mexico, much to the alarm of growers who rely heavily on immigrant
labor to meet seasonal needs.8 Subsequently, the State Department announced that H-2A visa processing will resume, while in-person visa
interviews will be waived for anyone who interviewed the previous year. In the end, as the fear of labor and food shortages grew, the State
Department decided to waive the in-person visa interview requirement for all H-2A applicants, both new and returning workers, as well as
seasonal nonagricultural workers seeking entry through the H-2B program.9 Furthermore, President Trump recently announced plans to sign an
executive order temporarily banning people from immigrating permanently into the United States, but the anticipated announcement
reportedly will not affect the entry of seasonal agricultural workers into the United States or provide any additional safeguards for the health
and safety of those workers or people with whom they may come into contact.10 The administration’s efforts to facilitate the entry of
farmworkers into the United States even as it bans countless other immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers speaks, in part, to the important
role that such farmworkers play in supporting the American economy and the country’s food security. It is reasonable for the State Department
to make it easier for more farmworkers to come in order to prevent an impending food shortage. But bringing in still more workers without
taking extra precautions to protect their health and safety—as well as the health and safety of all farmworkers and people with whom they
interact—would be shortsighted. If nothing is done to ensure that proper protections are put in place for these
farmworkers and other vulnerable food chain workers, these workers are not the only ones jeopardized;
the workers that they will be living and working alongside are also at risk . Not only that, but broader efforts in
the community to tamp down the disease through social distancing and sanitation efforts will also be
undermined. Moreover, if farmworkers begin to contract the coronavirus, farm labor supply will decrease—
with a potentially devastating effect on food production. More must be done to safeguard these important workers as
they perform essential tasks. Protecting farmworkers is essential to the nation’s food supply chain . An outbreak
among farmworkers can potentially shutter entire farm operations at a time when the supply chain is
already experiencing unprecedented disruption. Earlier this month, after three farmworkers tested positive for COVID-19 in
Cayuga County, New York, and one of them died, farm owners became even more aware of the spread of the disease.11 Swift action to prevent
the spread of the coronavirus must be taken. This is even more urgent in light of the shuttering of several meatpacking plants due to
widespread infection among workers.12 Essential workers are not disposable.
Second is deportations – ICE raids are thinning out critical farm workers – that risks
complete agricultural collapse
Garfield 17 [Leanna Garfield, journalist at Business Insider, citing Bruce Goldstein, the
president of Farmworker Justice, a nonprofit that aims to improve farmers' living and
working conditions, February 3, 2017. “‘Our agricultural system would collapse’ if Trump
starts mass deportations, says farm worker advocate.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-deportation-agriculture-2017-2]
The Trump administration is considering plans to deport immigrants who rely on public assistance and restrict the flow of foreign-born workers,
according to drafts of potential executive orders obtained by the Washington Post. Though the plans are merely under discussion, they
reinforce Trump's commitment to anti-immigration policies — an agenda that also includes his proposed wall along the US-Mexico border and
the deportation of undocumented immigrants. At a February 2 summit hosted by Food Tank, a nonprofit think tank focused on food policy,
researchers, chefs, and policy makers expressed concern over the effects Trump's potential immigration
restrictions could have on American farms. "If we were to engage in massive deportations, our agricultural
system would collapse," said Bruce Goldstein, the president of Farmworker Justice, a nonprofit that aims to improve farmers' living
and working conditions. Of the 1.5 to 2 million people working in agriculture today, at least 50% to 70% of farm workers are
undocumented immigrants, according to a recent report by the American Farm Bureau Federation
(AFBF). If the US were to deport a significant portion of them, the move could result in labor and food
production shortages, Goldstein said. The Trump administration's draft plans follow up on his campaign promises to crack down on
immigration as a way to protect and create jobs for American workers — Trump has suggested that low-skilled immigration has reduced wages
and job availability for US citizens, and that current immigration policies to not sufficiently prioritize American jobs. (Studies have generally
found that not to be true, however.) The AFBF report suggests that agricultural laborers would be hard to replace because
of how grueling the work is —12-hour shifts in 100-degree weather (without overtime pay) are common.
And relying on automated systems over human workers would be expensive for farm owners, especially
on smaller farms, Goldstein says. A large-scale labor shortage could therefore lead to a 5% to 6% jump in food
prices for consumers, the report says. "The majority of farm workers in this country are undocumented. We need them, we should
respect them, and we should grant them the chance to have an immigration status and a path to citizenship," Goldstein said. " If we don't
figure that out, agriculture is in trouble."

US ag exports are key to global food security – that prevents great power wars
Castellaw 17 [John Castellaw, 36-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Founder
and CEO of Farmspace Systems LLC, “Opinion: Food Security Strategy Is Essential to Our
National Security.” May 1, 2017. https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/9203-opinion-
food-security-strategy-is-essential-to-our-national-security]
The United States faces many threats to our National Security. These threats include continuing wars
with extremist elements such as ISIS and potential wars with rogue state North Korea or regional
nuclear power Iran. The heated economic and diplomatic competition with Russia and a surging China
could spiral out of control. Concurrently, we face threats to our future security posed by growing civil strife, famine, and refugee and
migration challenges which create incubators for extremist and anti-American government factions. Our response cannot be one dimensional
but instead must be a nuanced and comprehensive National Security Strategy combining all elements of National Power including a Food
Security Strategy. An
American Food Security Strategy is an imperative factor in reducing the multiple
threats impacting our National wellbeing. Recent history has shown that reliable food supplies and
stable prices produce more stable and secure countries. Conversely, food insecurity, particularly in
poorer countries, can lead to instability, unrest, and violence. Food insecurity drives mass migration
around the world from the Middle East, to Africa, to Southeast Asia, destabilizing neighboring
populations, generating conflicts, and threatening our own security by disrupting our economic,
military, and diplomatic relationships. Food system shocks from extreme food-price volatility can be
correlated with protests and riots. Food price related protests toppled governments in Haiti and Madagascar in 2007 and 2008. In
2010 and in 2011, food prices and grievances related to food policy were one of the major drivers of the Arab Spring uprisings. Repeatedly,
history has taught us that a strong agricultural sector is an unquestionable requirement for inclusive and sustainable growth, broad-based
development progress, and long-term stability. The impact can be remarkable and far reaching. Rising
income, in addition to
reducing the opportunities for an upsurge in extremism, leads to changes in diet, producing demand for
more diverse and nutritious foods provided, in many cases, from American farmers and ranchers.
Emerging markets currently purchase 20 percent of U.S. agriculture exports and that figure is expected
to grow as populations boom. Moving early to ensure stability in strategically significant regions requires long term planning and a
disciplined, thoughtful strategy. To combat current threats and work to prevent future ones, our national leadership must employ the entire
spectrum of our power including diplomatic, economic, and cultural elements. The best means to prevent future chaos and the resulting
instability is positive engagement addressing the causes of instability before it occurs. This is not rocket science. We know where the instability
is most likely to occur. The
world population will grow by 2.5 billion people by 2050. Unfortunately, this
massive population boom is projected to occur primarily in the most fragile and food insecure countries .
This alarming math is not just about total numbers. Projections show that the greatest increase is in the age groups most vulnerable to
extremism. There are currently 200 million people in Africa between the ages of 15 and 24, with that number expected to double in the next 30
years. Already, 60% of the unemployed in Africa are young people. Too often these situations deteriorate into shooting wars
requiring the deployment of our military forces. We should be continually mindful that the price we pay for committing military forces is
measured in our most precious national resource, the blood of those who serve. For those who live in rural America, this has a disproportionate
impact. Fully 40% of those who serve in our military come from the farms, ranches, and non-urban communities that make up only 16% of our
population. Actions taken now to increase agricultural sector jobs can provide economic opportunity and stability for
those unemployed youths while helping to feed people. A recent report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs identifies agriculture
development as the core essential for providing greater food security, economic growth, and population well-being. Our
active support
for food security, including agriculture development, has helped stabilize key regions over the past 60
years. A robust food security strategy, as a part of our overall security strategy, can mitigate the growth
of terrorism, build important relationships, and support continued American economic and agricultural
prosperity while materially contributing to our Nation’s and the world’s security.

Food insecurity leads to nuclear war – the risk is high and it causes extinction
Cribb 19 [Julian Cribb, distinguished science writer with more than thirty awards for
journalism, October 3, 2019. “Food or War.” Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/food-or-
war/2D6F728A71C0BFEA0CEC85897066DCAF]
Although actual numbers of warheads have continued to fall from its peak of 70,000 weapons in the mid 1980s, scientists argue the
danger of nuclear conflict in fact increased in the first two decades of the twenty first century. This was due to the
modernisation of existing stockpiles, the adoption of dangerous new technologies such as robot delivery systems, hypersonic missiles, artificial
intelligence and electronic warfare, and the continuing leakage of nuclear materials and knowhow to nonnuclear nations and potential terrorist
organisations. In early 2018 the hands of the
‘ Doomsday Clock ’ , maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, were re-set
at two minutes to midnight, the highest risk to humanity that it has ever shown since the clock was
introduced in 1953. This was due not only to the state of the world ’s nuclear arsenal, but also to irresponsible language by world
leaders, the growing use of social media to destabilise rival regimes, and to the rising threat of uncontrolled climate change (see below). 12 In
an historic moment on 17 July 2017, 122 nations voted in the UN for the first time ever in favour of a treaty banning all nuclear weapons. This
called for comprehensive prohibition of “ a full range of nuclear-weapon-related activities, such as undertaking to develop, test, produce,
manufacture, acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, as well as the use or threat of use of these
weapons. ” 13 However, 71 other countries– including all the nuclear states– either opposed the ban, abstained or declined to vote. The Treaty
vote was nonetheless interpreted by some as a promising first step towards abolishing the nuclear nightmare that hangs over the entire human
species. In contrast, 192 countries had signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention to ban the use of chemical weapons, and 180 to the
Biological Weapons Convention. As of 2018, 96 per cent of previous world stocks of chemical weapons had been destroyed– but their
continued use in the Syrian conflict and in alleged assassination attempts by Russia indicated the world remains at risk. 14 As things stand, the
only entities that can afford to own nuclear weapons are nations– and if humanity is to be wiped out, it will most likely be
as a result of an atomic conflict between nations. It follows from this that, if the world is to be made safe from such a fate it
will need to get rid of nations as a structure of human self-organisation and replace them with wiser, less aggressive forms of self-governance.
After all, the nation state really only began in the early nineteenth century and is by no means a permanent feature of self-governance, any
more than monarchies, feudal systems or priest states. Although many people still tend to assume it is. Between them, nations have butchered
more than 200 million people in the past 150 years and it is increasingly clear the world would be a far safer, more peaceable place without
either nations or nationalism. The question is what to replace them with. Although
there may at first glance appear to be no
close linkage between weapons of mass destruction and food , in the twenty first century with world resources of
food, land and water under growing stress, nothing can be ruled out. Indeed, chemical weapons have
frequently been deployed in the Syrian civil war, which had drought, agricultural failure and hunger among
its early drivers. And nuclear conflict remains a distinct possibility in South Asia and the Middle East,
especially, as these regions are already stressed in terms of food, land and water , and their nuclear
firepower or access to nuclear materials is multiplying. It remains an open question whether panicking regimes in
Russia, the USA or even France would be ruthless enough to deploy atomic weapons in an attempt to
quell invasion by tens of millions of desperate refugees, fleeing famine and climate chaos in their own homelands–
but the possibility ought not to be ignored . That nuclear war is at least a possible outcome of food and climate
crises was first flagged in the report The Age of Consequences by Kurt Campbell and the US-based Centre for Strategic
and International Studies, which stated ‘ it is clear that even nuclear war cannot be excluded as a political consequence of
global warming ’ . 15 Food insecurity is therefore a driver in the preconditions for the use of nuclear weapons,
whether limited or unlimited.

Most likely cause of global conflict, but solving it is a dampener

Lehane 17 (Sinéad Lehane is research manager for Future Directions International’s Global Food and
Water Crises Research program. Her current research projects include Australia’s food system and water
security in the Tibetan Plateau region. Shaping Conflict in the 21st Century—The Future of Food and
Water Security. February 2, 2017. www.hidropolitikakademi.org/shaping-conflict-in-the-21st-century-
the-future-of-food-and-water-security.html)

In his book, The Coming Famine, Julian Cribb writes that the wars of the 21st century will involve failed states, rebellions, civil
conflict, insurgencies and terrorism. All of these elements will be triggered by competition over
dwindling resources, rather than global conflicts with clearly defined sides. More than 40 countries
experienced civil unrest following the food price crisis in 2008 . The rapid increase in grain prices and
prevailing food insecurity in many states is linked to the outbreak of protests, food riots and the
breakdown of governance. Widespread food insecurity is a driving factor in creating a disaffected
population ripe for rebellion. Given the interconnectivity of food security and political stability, it is
likely food will continue to act as a political stressor on regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Addressing Insecurity Improving food and water security and encouraging resource sharing is critical to creating a stable and

secure global environment. While food and water shortages contribute to a rising cycle of violence,
improving food and water security outcomes can trigger the opposite and reduce the potential for conflict.
With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2040, the likelihood of conflict exacerbated by scarcity over the next

century is growing. Conflict is likely to be driven by a number of factors and difficult to address through
diplomacy or military force. Population pressures, changing weather, urbanization, migration, a loss of
arable land and freshwater resources are just some of the multi-layered stressors present in many
states. Future inter-state conflict will move further away from the traditional, clear lines of military
conflict and more towards economic control and influence.
 1AC – Advantage
Immigration and Customs Enforcement — or ICE — is engaged in an ethnic cleansing
campaign motivated by White Supremacy. ICE’s very existence relies on the racist
assumption that immigrants are a “national security threat.”
McElwee 18 — Sean McElwee, Co-Founder of Data for Progress—a progressive political organization,
2018 (“It’s Time to Abolish ICE,” The Nation, March 9th, Available Online at
https://www.thenation.com/article/its-time-to-abolish-ice/, Accessed 07-06-2018)

Dan Canon is running for Congress in Indiana’s ninth district this year. A career civil-rights lawyer, Canon
filed one of the cases against gay-marriage bans that eventually became the landmark Obergefell v.
Hodges, and he proudly wore a Notorious RBG shirt under his suit to the Supreme Court. He is currently
representing individuals suing Donald Trump for inciting violence at his rallies.

Canon has also defended clients swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and fought a
Kafkaesque deportation system that, at one point, wouldn’t even disclose the location of his client. Now
Canon believes ICE should be abolished entirely.

“I don’t think a lot of people have any kind of direct experience with ICE, so they don’t really know what
they do or what they’re about. If they did, they’d be appalled,” Canon told me. “ICE as it presently exists
is an agency devoted almost solely to cruelly and wantonly breaking up families . The agency talks
about, and treats, human beings like they’re animals . They scoop up people in their apartments or their
workplaces and take them miles away from their spouses and children.”

The idea of defunding ICE has gained traction among immigrant-rights groups horrified by the speed at
which, under President Donald Trump, the agency has ramped up an already brutal deportation process.
Mary Small, policy director at Detention Watch Network, said, “Responsible policymakers need to be
honest about the fact that the core of the agency is broken.” Her group led the charge to defund ICE
with its #DefundHate campaign last year.

Groups like Indivisible Project and the Center for Popular Democracy have also called for defunding ICE.
Brand New Congress, a progressive PAC, has the proposal in its immigration platform.

“ICE is terrorizing American communities right now,” said Angel Padilla, policy director of the Indivisible
Project. “They’re going into schools, entering hospitals, conducting massive raids, and separating
children from parents every day. We are funding those activities, and we need to use all the leverage we
have to stop it.”

Though ICE abolition is spreading on the left, it quickly meets extreme skepticism elsewhere. In part, this
is because the mainstream political discourse has a huge blind spot for the agency’s increasingly brutal
policies. While elites have generally become concerned with rising authoritarianism, they have mainly
ignored the purges ICE is conducting in immigrant communities. For example, in their recent book, How
Democracies Die, Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky do not mention ICE at all. Centrist pundits like
Jonathan Chait have dedicated thousands of words to the threat of “PC culture” on college campuses,
but haven’t found time to question whether an opaque and racist deportation force might pose a larger
threat to democracy than campus editorial pages.
Others tend to dismiss ICE abolition as more of a troll than a serious policy demand . Josh Barro, a senior
editor at Business Insider, argued that progressives have not paired the proposal with “a plan to do the
function without the hated agency.”

But the goal of abolishing the agency is to abolish the function . ICE has become a genuine threat to
democracy, and it is destroying thousands of lives. Moreover, abolishing it would only take us back to
2003, when the agency was first formed.

ICE was a direct product of the post–September 11 panic culture, and was created in the legislation
Congress passed in the wake of the attacks. From the start, the agency was paired with the brand-new
Department of Homeland Security’s increased surveillance of communities of color and immigrant
communities. By putting ICE under the scope of DHS, the government framed immigration as a national
security issue rather than an issue of community development, diversity or human rights .

That’s not to say America’s deportation policies only got bad in 2003, nor that it hasn’t been a bipartisan
project. When he was a senior advisor to then-President Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel wrote that Clinton
should work to “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.” When Republicans gave
Clinton the chance to do this with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of
1996, he jumped at it.

IIRIRA set up the legal infrastructure for mass deportations and expanded the number of crimes
considered deportable. Clinton’s blessing also harshened the political atmosphere around immigration.
As recently as 2006, Democrats still explicitly used anti-immigrant sentiment as a campaign tactic.
During his failed Tennessee Senate run, Harold Ford Jr. ran ads warning that “Every day almost 2,000
people enter America illegally. Every day hundreds of employers look the other way, handing out jobs
that keep illegals coming. And every day the rest of us pay the price.”

Even Barack Obama, while he made pains to distinguish between “good” and “bad” immigrants,
presided over aggressive deportation tactics in his first term in order to build support for a path to
citizenship that never came.

The central assumption of ICE in 2018 is that any undocumented immigrant is inherently a threat. In that
way, ICE’s tactics are philosophically aligned with racist thinkers like Richard Spencer and the writers at
the white-supremacist journal VDare. ICE’s modus operandi under Trump bears a striking resemblance
to the strategy proposed by white supremacist Jared Taylor in 2015:

The key, however, would be a few well publicized raids on non-criminal illegals. Television
images of Mexican families dropped over the border with no more than they could carry would
be very powerful. The vast majority of illegals would quickly decide to get their affairs in order
and choose their own day of departure rather than wait for ICE to choose it for them. The main
thing would be to convince illegals that ICE was serious about kicking them out. Ironically, the
more ICE was prepared to do, the less it would have to do.

This is a near-perfect summary of ICE under acting director Thomas Homan, who has repeatedly made
clear that all undocumented residents should be afraid of his agents. “You should look over your
shoulder, and you need to be worried,” he boasted in his congressional testimony last year.
Homan does not apply any light touch when expressing his authoritarian tendencies. He has threatened
to jail and prosecute local officials in so-called “sanctuary cities” that do not fully comply with ICE
mandates. The agency has also clearly been targeting political opponents for deportations and has
worked to deport individuals for speaking to media about ICE.

Homan’s authoritarian saber rattling has essentially been ignored in the mainstream political dialogue,
but the candidates and activists I spoke with hear it loud and clear. So do the communities they
represent.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is challenging Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District,
which covers part of the Bronx and Queens, told me she believes that “After a long and protracted
history of sexual assault and uninvestigated deaths in ICE’s detention facilities, as well as the corrosive
impact ICE has had on our schools, courts, and communities, it’s time to reset course.”

New York’s 14th district is among the most diverse and immigrant-heavy in the country. Ocasio-Cortez
not only supports defunding ICE, but also wants a full congressional inquiry into ICE enforcement and
detention practices. She further argues for a “a truth and reconciliation process for victims of any
potential sexual assault, neglect, and misconduct discovered as a result.”

Kaniela Ing, a member of the Hawaii State Legislature currently running for the House in the state’s first
district, has also endorsed defunding ICE, tweeting this week that “When they say defund Planned
Parenthood (and destroy millions of lives), we say defund ICE (and save millions of lives).”

Suraj Patel, a child of immigrants, is running a well-funded insurgent campaign against Democratic
incumbent Representative Carolyn Maloney in New York’s 12th Congressional District. He would vote to
defund ICE if he makes it to Congress. “ICE has crossed a red line under this president by harassing,
pursuing, and terrorizing immigrants and activists all over this country with impunity. These mass
deportations are forcing immigrants to live in fear, while making the rest of us less safe,” he said.
“Defunding ICE and returning it to be a passport-patrol and customs-enforcement agency rather than an
above-the-law deportation squad is a critical step to protecting all Americans and our civil liberties.”

Granted, this position might not fly everywhere in the country. But Hillary Clinton won the 12th district
with 83 percent of the vote, and candidates like Patel are trying to shift the Overton window. “We miss
an incredible opportunity when we allow districts like ours to be safe havens for the status quo,” Patel
said.

There is increasing support for limiting or even ending cooperation with ICE at the state level, too. Abdul
El-Sayed, a gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, told me that he “will not waste a dime of state taxpayer
money to enforce laws that would tear apart families—and tear apart our economy.”

Jessica Ramos, who is running for a New York State Senate seat in Queens, has also endorsed defunding
ICE. “Instead of making our communities safer, ICE has taught immigrants to fear and distrust law
enforcement,” she said. “It’s absolutely time to defund the agency and start working on real, common-
sense immigration reform.”

Ramos’s opponent in the primary, Jose Peralta, joined the Independent Democratic Caucus in the
statehouse last year, which is a group of politicians who were elected as Democrats formed a power-
sharing agreement with Republicans. He claimed this would position him to bring tuition benefits and
protections to undocumented immigrants, but those benefits have not materialized, though he has
gotten a nice pay raise thanks to the GOP.

The call to abolish ICE is, above all, a demand for the Democratic Party to begin seriously resisting an
unbridled white-supremacist surveillance state that it had a hand in creating . Though the party has
moved left on core issues from reproductive rights to single-payer health care, it’s time for progressives
to put forward a demand that deportation be taken not as the norm but rather as a disturbing indicator
of authoritarianism.

White supremacy can no longer be the center of the immigration debate . Democrats have voted to
fully fund ICE with limited fanfare, because in the American immigration discussion, the right-wing
position is the center and the left has no voice. There has been disturbing word fatigue around “mass
deportation,” and the threat of deportation is so often taken lightly that many have lost the ability to
conceptualize what it means. Next to death, being stripped from your home, family, and community is
the worst fate that can be inflicted on a human , as many societies practicing banishment have
recognized. It’s time to rein in the greatest threat we face: an unaccountable strike force executing a
campaign of ethnic cleansing.

we need to enact policies that are a fundamental rethinking of the United States
current approach on migration
Dunlap, Denver Law Review Editor,19 (Allison Crennen-Dunlap, Denver Law Review Editor,
January 3, 2019, Denver Law Review, “Abolishing the ICEberg”, https://www.denverlawreview.org/dlr-
online-article/2019/1/3/abolishing-the-iceberg.html, P. 155-157, accessed 7/10/20, EM)

Given that ICE is but one entity in a system that had been designed to produce mass detention and
deportation before ICE ever existed, what might it mean to abolish ICE? The simplest answer to this
question is, “nothing,” and proposals have been set forth that would accomplish just that.74 The call to
abolish ICE is significant, however, if it is a call to abolish the United States’s overall punitive approach to
migration rather than a single agency.

Taken literally, the call to abolish ICE is virtually meaningless. Abolishing this agency would be simple
and produce few, if any, changes to current practice if ICE’s duties were merely distributed among
existing agencies or assigned to a new agency bearing a name other than “ICE.” Indeed, the Homeland
Security Act of 200275 abolished INS76 and simply distributed its duties to other agencies,77 including
by establishing ICE.78 Similarly, the Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act,79 a
bill introduced by certain democratic lawmakers on July 12, 2018, would abolish ICE within one year but
retain “any essential functions carried out by ICE that do not violate fundamental due process and
human rights.”80 The bill thus leaves the door open for a simple transfer of functions to another
agency. Further, the bill endorses immigration detention and might even expand it, providing that some
agency would “prioritiz[e] the hiring of personnel to address the legal, health, and social-service needs
of detained individuals.”81 Under this bill, abolition means little.

But the abolish ICE movement is not limited to such a narrow approach. Mijente, a group of Latinx
and Chicanx activists working for “justice and self-determination for all people,”82 has created a
policy platform that builds on the call to abolish ICE but offers a more historically grounded vision of
what an alternative to current practices might entail.83 Among other plans, Mijente would abolish
immigration detention; end all deportation; eliminate state and local support for ICE; repeal unlawful
entry and reentry; and defund Border Patrol as it currently exists, creating instead a border agency
that provides emergency rescue services.84 Mijente expressly grounds its proposal in an
understanding that the U.S. government’s punitive approach to migration is part and parcel of
broader policies that maintain the subordination of historically subordinated groups.85 Indeed,
Mijente ties the separation of migrant families during the summer of 2018 to other examples of state
violence against subordinated groups, including the historical separation of black families subjected to
slavery86; the contemporary separation of black families via the criminal justice system87; the U.S.
government’s historical and contemporary separation of indigenous families88; the internment of
Japanese-American families during World War II89; and the forced institutionalization, sterilization,
and criminalization of people with disa-bilities.90 Mijente’s vision thus extends far beyond the mere
abolition of an agency. Rather, it calls for a fundamental rethinking of the United States’s current
approach to migration—an approach that relies on a racist criminal justice system to “divid[e] our
communities between those labeled ‘deserving’ of humanitarian reform, and those who will be left in
the system of immigration enforcement, detention, and incarceration.”

In short, while a literal reading of the call to abolish ICE renders that rallying cry meaningless, a
proposal inspired by that rallying cry but grounded in a deeper understanding of the history out of
which ICE was born is a call for profound change.

Our demand is necessarily a starting point, not an end point. The struggle for a world
without ICE is also a struggle for the liberation of all exploited peoples and for a world
without cages and without borders and without White Supremacy.
CIYJA 17 — California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, a statewide alliance of immigrant youth-led
community organizations in California, 2018 (“First We Abolish ICE: A Manifesto for Immigrant
Liberation,” July 2nd, Available Online at https://ciyja.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/AbolishICE.pdf,
Accessed 07-14-2018)

Given that the rebirth of the movement dedicated to abolishing ICE has erupted from the confines of
social media and into the occupation of federal buildings (and even leaked into the political platforms of
Democrats across the country) we at the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA) think it is
vital for those of us who are directly impacted to de fine what a world without Poli-ICE could look like .

First and foremost, we must acknowledge we sit on occupied lands. The mainstream fight for legitimacy
in this country as undocumented people in the past focused on the acceptance of migrants into a
culture of white supremacy and settler colonial mentality. After all, the "Dreamer" narrative stems from
a willingness to comply and assimilate into whiteness and western-fi xated measurements of success.
Though many migrants who flee their homelands are Indigenous and fleeing anti-Indigenous
governments, the mainstream immigrant rights movement has failed to make space and bring light to
these issues. As such, we acknowledge that we must defer to Indigenous peoples whose lands we
occupy for permission to stay, and establish a platform for globally displaced Indigenous communities to
speak their truth and ultimately reclaim the land that was stolen from them.

Secondly, we must acknowledge that ICE and detention centers exist as an extension of the carceral
state, which in turn serves the purpose of ethnic cleansing. It is nothing new that the United States
should weaponize its propaganda of criminalization to justify the splitting of families and to force
communities of color into labor camps run by private companies like CORE Civic and GEO Group1. For-
profit private companies have an ongoing war that they have waged particularly against the Black
community, and have more recently begun replicating to profit off of the migrant community at large.

As such, if we can fight for a world in which ICE is abolished, we must also be willing to fight for a
world in which all prisons go away with it. We cannot choose to ignore the fact that the prison
industrial complex (PIC) serves as the blueprint for the apparatus locking migrant children in cages
today. If we fail to abolish it, Black families will continue to be torn apart, and the carceral state will
thrive. If we fail to advocate for a compassionate alternative, then it will simply replicate itself in other
ways against other communities.

The following is a manifesto for all those who dare dream and fight for a world without cages, without
borders, and for the liberation for all exploited peoples on this earth. [end page 1]

On Abolishing ICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in 2003 after George W. Bush's
propaganda of patriotism led to other state-funded human atrocities, such as the age of modern
surveillance and the Iraq War. In retrospect, we as a collective millennial generation denounced these
atrocities as inhumane and continue to play active roles in ensuring they end. It’s time we extend those
efforts towards abolishing ICE.

Under the Department of Homeland Security, ICE became the police force for the ongoing nativist
campaign to criminalize and dehumanize immigrant communities exploiting the chaos of 9/11. With
little to no oversight, ICE has engaged in human rights violations that range from sexual assault to
kidnapping children from the grasps of their parents to hold as political prisoners. Trumpism has allowed
ICE's mechanism to function at its full potential, after having received an expansion from Barack Obama
since its creation that was supported by Democrats such as the Clintons2.

Since then, ICE has embedded its violence across the country by turning all law enforcement agencies
into its oppressive tentacles. Already accustomed to enforcing laws built upon white anxieties against
people of color, sheriffs and police officers across the country seamlessly collaborated with ICE by
detaining undocumented immigrants or notifying ICE whenever an undocumented person was being
released from county jail. This created a system that doubly punished undocumented immigrants they
criminalized, entangled them into the prison industrial complex, and then removed them from the
country after exploiting their labor.

In California, we put a stop to this senseless relationship by pushing forth policies that halted any
collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE. The inkling for law enforcement to continue
robbing migrants of due process proved much too great for sheriffs, as they now push forth loopholes
that undermine what the people of California have demanded. We believe that when law enforcers
refuse to follow the will of the people, it is our moral duty to rise up and abolish them. [end page 2]

Abolishment has become the moral cry of our generation. With the expanding access to social media,
images of children in cages began to circulate amidst the masses, flagging a moral emergency in the
United States. From grassroots organizers to rising Leftists unseating established Democrats, the time to
abolish ICE is now.
To do so, we must be clear in our demands so as to not give agency to the state or private interest to
define what that abolishment looks like.

The following is a compassionate liberating model to detention and deportation .

Those of us at the forefront are not shocked by the inhumanity of ICE and the human rights violations in
detention centers. In fact, these violations have been going on for the past decade with almost no public
backlash against the state for allowing these atrocities. Given the lack of interest from citizens to ensure
their country liberated all of our people under Obama’s deportation spree, we took community defense
into our own hands. We developed deportation defense as a community-led liberation model, from
which we can build a world where ICE is abolished.

At its core, deportation defense campaigns are aimed at providing liberating models for undocumented
immigrants in detention, so that they may fight their legal case outside of cages, where they are not
provided access to legal representation. At CIYJA, we and our partners have been successfully liberating
our community members out of detention, through extensive campaigns that pressure ICE officials to
use prosecutorial discretion to allow immigrants to fight their legal cases outside of detention. Once
released, we plug community members with legal representation, and ensure they have access to
resources that allow them to thrive and reintegrate into life out of detention. We then follow up when
they have immigration court dates, to both ensure they are attending and to accompany them to ensure
that ICE does not attempt to send them to immigration prisons again.

In this way, we have managed to abolish the cages around individual people for a more compassionate
alternative that ensures the safety of our immigrant community as they are prayed on by ICE. Through
abolishment, we can extend this model to all immigrants currently detained.

Organizations such as CIYJA, Not1More, Immigrant Youth Coalition, Freedom For Immigrants, Interfaith
Movement for Human Integrity, and legal services providers such [end page 3] as Pangea Legal Services
and Centro Legal have been practicing these models at a local level. We can lead in making this a
national and compassionate strategy to replace private detention centers and violent immigration
enforcement.

This liberating model ensures that our community members are not cattled around in cages, transferred
between privately owned detention centers to federal penitentiaries. This liberating model ensures that
no family separation occurs, because folks remain in their community as they fight their right to remain
in the country. With a community to support and encourage their legal fight, there is no need for
militarized enforcement to force communities from their homes and workplaces.

This liberating model ensures the dehumanization that is happening to our immigrant communities
ends. [end page 4]

On Opening Borders

Undocumented people have been made stateless and disenfranchised by both this country and the ones
we fled. Often, the acceptance of U.S. imperialism by the neo-liberal politicians in our countries of origin
led to the political and economical short fallings that forced us to flee in search for safety. Once in the
United States, we were then dehumanized through criminalization and racialized immigration
enforcement. This has shaped understandings of citizenship as a token for complacency towards a
specific nationalist agenda. In the United States, that nationalism has exceeded nationality and focuses
instead on whiteness.

From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the recent Muslim Ban legitimized by the Supreme Court, immigration
limitations and enforcement have often been racially charged. One cannot deny the role white
nationalism played in pushing out non-white migrants from this country. This can be seen in the ways
the United States refuses to investigate the rise of Russian mothers entering the country to give birth to
white Russian babies while simultaneously it rips the children of Central American (Indigenous) asylees
from their arms3.

As such, we believe all immigration policies to be deeply rooted in white nationalist ideologies hidden
behind feigned concerns over public safety and homeland security. As those condemned to be creating
public and homeland uncertainty, we see right through the lies of such propaganda being espoused by
the likes of Trump and Obama before him.

When they say animals, we see simply young immigrants navigating the brims of this country attempting
to survive. When they say invaders, we see refugees wishing their homelands could provide the safety
we believed existed in the United States. Our lived experiences and the people who surround us provide
the nuance necessary for us to understand that all policies being drafted to settle public uproar never
take into consideration the people they're being created around.

To fight for migrant liberation is to openly challenge the notion of citizenship and [end page 5]
statehood, all of which are used to spread nationalist inclings that antagonize those on the fringes. To -
fight for migrant liberation is to ask the United States, Germany, Russia, China, and all superpowers of
the world to stop meddling in the economic and political processes of the Global South .

This is why we make a case for opened borders

On initiating the legal fight against California's sanctuary policies, Jeff Sessions attempted to delegitimize
those of us who fight for the freedom of movement and migration as “opened borders radicals 4.”
Truthfully, the only opened border radicals in this country are those capitalist interests that have
constantly disrupted the political processes of the countries migrants have fled . Given that these
capitalist interests are often in the name of centralizing the natural resources of the world for the
easiest access of white United States citizens, the nation-state supports in their efforts.

Anything from the United States' support of the occupation of Palestine5 to the support of the far-right
dictator of Honduras6 lays the framework for this understanding. It then follows that the United States
has no moral right to refuse to adopt open border policies to accept the refugees of the lands they've
devastated with political medlings and deprived of opportunities to prosper.

In an ever globalizing world that social media has connected more than ever before, it is the moral
responsibility of all humans to ensure dignity and respect is made accessible to all who inhabit this
earth. We are, afterall, a species capable of communicating with each other to establish trust and
companionship. It is misguidance that has led our moral character to be taken over by nationalism
which, even in its most passive form, denies us the privilege of belonging to the global community.

Collaboration, understanding, and belonging is human nature to us. Let us expand our understanding of
belonging beyond the nation-state, and see ourselves as a species capable of abolishing cages and
creating compassion—a species that celebrates the cultural richness of our multi-ethnic world, which
refuses to homogenize the world under one culture while simultaneously erasing the rest. [end page 6]

On Ending Global Capitalism

Above all else, we recognize the fight for migrant liberation is directly pitted against global capitalism .
Through it, imperialist powers that have devastated global natural resources for the purpose of
centralizing and then limiting who has access to them.

Capitalists have successfully convinced an entire world that free will is somehow correlated with a free,
unregulated market. This unregulated market could then extract all natural resources from nonwhite
homelands with the promise of establishing a free people. Such was its propaganda during the Cold
War.

Whenever the people of these lands would resist, the United States facilitated the political disruption
necessary for far-right political puppets to take hold of the people—such was the case in Central
America as it was in Southeast Asian countries7. At the same time, communist powers supported
militias to cease control over the people utilizing Leftist ideologies. Though it provided the framework
for various people to rise up against an established order, both communism and capitalism were used to
lay ruin of our homelands.

Many of our parents are refugees from the Cold War fought outside of the white world.

This same structure has then been used to marginalize the displaced refugees once here for the purpose
of creating a class of laborers of color that the United States can exploit. It is then able to dispose of
these folks through deportation should the population become less white. [end page 7]

This is why we must openly challenge global capitalism

The exploitation of the human body must end, which means relentlessly unregulated capitalism must be
a thing of the past. Labor movements have historically challenged this apparatus, and intersecting the
labor movement with agricultural migrant laborers has even led to death8. Private interest murdering to
stall any such collaboration only highlights the importance of that work. Just as those criminalized and
imprisoned in the United States have been forced to become industrial slaves, so have migrant workers
become slaves for the agricultural and urban elite.

As we work to create a world in which no human being is seen as disposable labor, we must ensure
there is health access for all poor and working class people, regardless of their legal status. We must
ensure all have access to shelter and nutrition.

As a movement, we must denounce any and all privileges built on the suffering and exploitation of the
masses. This means refusing the creation of an undocumented elite that absorbs all resources for the
purpose of creating an urban, educated class of immigrants. We must build with our agricultural
communities to ensure they are treated with dignity and respect amidst the labor that feeds the entire
nation.

Beyond the U.S. border, we must ensure that private interests no longer get the legal support of any
nation-state. We must stand with poor people globally and denounce any and all private interests that
exploit global natural resources. We must ensure these interest don't violate other people's dignity
when it becomes illegal to do it to poor folks within these borders.

If poor liberation is not a global movement, we risk pushing labor violations to the Global South. [end
page 8]

In Conclusion

In closing, the liberation of migrants should not begin and end within any given border. It should be a
stateless movement to end the suffering of globally impoverished people. If it must begin with the
abolition of ICE, it must then proceed to abolish all cages . It should aim to be a global push to end
nationalism in all its shapes and forms. It should be a promise that as stateless peoples, we owe no
allegiance to a flag but to each other and all global communities displaced by nation-states.

Migrant liberation should create a world which respects the cultural richness that thrive at each corner
of our planet. It should be an invitation to exchange ideas and customs to ensure global prosperity. It
should not rest until it ends the attempt from any one culture to dominate the rest. It should end the
justification of economic systems built around egotistical rule .

Migrant liberation should mean that migration is a choice, not a necessity for survival.

[***Footnotes in this card***]

[1] Samantha Michaels, Maddinson Pauly. “Private Companies Are About to Cash In on Trump’s
Deporation Regime.” Mother Jones. (2008). https://www.motherjones.com/crime-
justice/2017/12/private-prison-companies-are-about-to-cash-in-on-trumps-deportation-regime/

[2] Jorge Rivas. “Here Are Some of the Democrats Who Paved the Way for the Family Seperation Crisis.”
Splinter News online (2018). https://splinternews.com/here-are-some-of-the-democrats-who-paved-
the-way-for-th-1826963453

[3] Cyanthia MacFadden, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Tracy Connor, Anna R. Schecter. “Birth Tourism Brings
Russian Baby Boom to Miami.” NBC News online. (2018). https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-
news/birth-tourism-brings-russian-baby-boom-miami-n836121

[4] Nick Miller. “Attorney General Jeff Sessions calls California ‘Open Border Radicals’.” Capital Public
Radio (2018).

[5] “US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” PBS News Hours online (2006).
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/middle_east-jan-june06-us_05-11

[6] Tracy Wilkinson. “Trump Administration Recofnizes Honduran President’s Reelection.” LA Times print
(2017).

[7] Cole Kazadin. “The Violence Central Americans Are Fleeing Was Stoked by US.” VICE News (2018).

[8] Cesar Chavez. “Eulogy for Runo Contreras.” UFW.org (1979).

[9] Mark Bitman. “California Central Valley, Land of a Billion Vegetables.” New York Times (2012).
The stakes couldn’t be higher. White Supremacy is responsible for massive global
violence and oppression and its continued acceptance risks human extinction.
Comissiong 13 — Solomon Comissiong, Professor of African American Studies at the University of
Maryland-College Park, Education Consultant and Activist, holds a B.A. in Communications and M.S. in
College Student Personnel from the University of Rhode Island, 2013 (“The War on White Supremacy,”
Black Agenda Report, March 30th, Available Online at http://griid.org/2013/03/30/the-war-on-white-
supremacy/, Accessed 10-16-2014)

Despite the ill-intentioned “war on terror,” there is one ideological war that would be well served, if
aggressively launched. An ideological “war on White Supremacy” would do humanity immense favors,
especially the people of color who are terrorized by it, every day of their lives. White Supremacy is a
most nefarious ideology, created by white people for white people. White Supremacy rears its hideous
head throughout the globe and has been responsible for well over 100 million deaths (i.e., African
Holocaust, Native American Holocaust). However, White Supremacy not only kills bodies, it destroys
minds. It is the programming to believe that white people , their various cultures, and their mores are
inherently better than all other people and their respective cultures – period. People are taught, from a
very young age, to worship some of them most devilish white people the world has ever known, simply
because they are white. This is a vastly under-taught aspect of White Supremacy.

White Supremacy is often limited to being described as some toothless hillbilly or muscle bound and
hairless white male with a Swastika etched in to his hollow, yet hate filled, head. This is merely one
minor aspect of White Supremacy. White Supremacy, in its essence, is much, much more pervasive than
the physical form we are programmed to sometimes see in human flesh. White Supremacy is most
effective in its ideological form. Everything else is a destructive manifestation of that ideology.

White Supremacy bores destructive holes into the impressionable minds of children. White children are
subconsciously programmed to falsely believe that they are the champions of humanity and that their
contributions to the world vastly overshadow that of people of color. White Supremacy blinds them to
myriad truths detailing the origins of sciences, medicine, democracy and philosophy came out of African,
not Europe. This assembly-line type of programming sets in motion the next wave of future white adults
mentally equipped carry out the crimes of their mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. It
robs these white children of humanity without them ever realizing they are being developed to see the
world in a most limiting and destructive way. Without progressive social intervention many white youth
are bound to develop similar socially destructive ways as their elders.

Children of color, on the other hand, are systematically programmed to, not only see white people as
better than themselves, but to also extol white people who carried out crimes against humanity against
people of color. Within the white settler colony, otherwise known as the United States, children of color
are force-fed heaping platefuls of White Supremacy. It is a most psychologically unhealthy meal. They
are taught to call slave masters their “Founding Fathers,” men who would have worked them to death
had these children been anywhere within the vicinity of these devilish human beings. The likes of
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson all held enslaved Africans
against their will. George Washington and Andrew Jackson were also notorious for their assaults on
Indigenous people from North America. It is very telling of how sadistic “American” society is, that it
would impose these kinds of men upon the minds of children, especially children of color. This is exactly
what white supremacist societies do – they force children of color to assimilate. Those aforementioned
men, when cited within classrooms and homes, should be held as examples of what not to do. A
humane society would do this. The US is far from being a humane society.

The US is a society that routinely abuses and destroys the lives of people of color. African/black and
Indigenous/Latino/brown communities are systematically targeted by way of this white supremacist and
institutionally racist war that is being waged upon them. Mass incarceration, the Prison Industry
Complex, and Police Brutality are all very much lethal aspects of White Supremacy. In a society that
rewards European genocidal monsters, like Christopher Columbus, it makes painful sense that the US
would be a place that harvests oppression much like farmers do fruits and vegetables. The US is riddled
with a legacy of “strange fruit.”

Police brutality is a most deleterious aspect of White Supremacy and Institutional Racism. This is why
police brutality disproportionately impact people of color. Thanks to the work of the Malcolm X
Grassroots Movement we know that in 2012 a black person was murdered by “law enforcement” at
least every 36 hours. The white supremacist corporate media did nothing to expose this story. And why
would they – they are who they are because of White Supremacy. A revolution to end White Supremacy
truly will not be televised – at least not on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or the like.

The so-called entertainment industry is replete with white supremacist images, messages, and is
controlled by White Supremacy and Institutional Racism. This is why the only images shown of Hip Hop
Culture, within the corporate media’s usurped airwaves, are that of the most virulently racist and
stereotypical images of people of color. These are the acceptable versions of blackness they feel
comfortable showing. Again, it matters little that Hip Hop is a culture largely created by African/black
youth. The white supremacist power structure that controls the media, that makes destructive images
popular while suppressing revolutionary ones, is no different than the white people who stole North
America from Indigenous people. Once in control of a resource they are hell-bent on suppressing any
semblance of resistance or justice.

White Supremacy is a social disease that infects entire societies, person-by-person, community-by-
community and nation-by-nation. It is a plague that has only gotten stronger and more deceptive
throughout its existence, which spans over several hundred years. If the US was a sincere and justice
oriented nation it would wage an all out war on the ideology of White Supremacy – aimed at destroying
all vestiges of a most deadly and disproportionate white power structure. The US’s ongoing existence as
a white settler nation precludes it from waging a noble war on White Supremacy. White Supremacy and
Institutional Racism largely fuel this country’s lifeblood. The US’s wars are ultimately justified by White
Supremacy and capitalism. Historically these wars have been waged for white men by white men.
However, with the growing number of people of color within the United States, the white power
structure has adapted to the times. In 2008 they selected their newest weapon – Barack Obama – a
brown-faced man willing to wage white supremacist/capitalist/imperialist wars for the white power
structure he ultimately serves. This, unfortunately, has worked like a lucky charm, thus converting
legions of black people (who previously opposed Euro-America’s imperialist wars) into cheerleaders for
the same reprehensible wars, simply because the face of Euro-American white supremacy is now a
brown one.

The struggle to end White Supremacy is one that must continue and grow even stronger – countless
youth of color simply depend on it. Resistance to white supremacist ideology is paramount. If you
believe in humanity (regardless of the color of your skin) you must join in this resistance. White
Supremacy is a most deadly social malady. It has given birth to Apartheid, Jim Crow, mass murder,
chattel slavery – the list literally goes on and on.

People of color must resist White Supremacy in every way they can. We must organize ourselves to
combat it – teaching our youth to recognize it is an important first step. People of color must collectively
resist White Supremacy, and good intentioned white people must play their own critical roles within this
struggle. It is the obligation of any good intentioned white person to go in to white communities and
organize an end to the social disease there. After all, White Supremacy emanates from white
communities. It is frequently birthed from ignorance and hatred, among several social maladies and
complexes.

White people, it is your responsibility to put an end to White Supremacy in your communities just as it is
the responsibility of men to bury Male Supremacy and sexual/physical abuse of women. White
Supremacy is killing masses of people (physically and mentally). When will we all decide to wage a war
on this pervasive social illness/ideology, and put and end to it? Humanity depends on our collective
commitment to end it before it metastasizes and puts an end to us all .

ICE is rotted to its core – intimidation tactics, aggressive policing, and the proliferation
of false information all make reform impossible – only abolition can solve
Hong, Boston College Law School Professor, 19 (Kari, 1/1/2019, NYU Review of Law & Social
Change, “10 Reasons Why Congress Should Defund ICE’s Deportation Force,”
https://socialchangenyu.com/harbinger/10-reasons-why-congress-should-defund-ices-deportation-
force/, Accessed 7/8/2020, MM)

Since its inception in 2002, ICE has been repeatedly caught making mistakes, lying to the public, acting
outside its legal authority, acting overzealously, causing preventable deaths, targeting law-abiding
community members, and making decisions tainted by racism.70 The Obama administration was
unable to rein in and reform the internal culture of ICE that aggressively—and at times unlawfully—
abused discretion, norms, and immigrants themselves. 71 As a result, it stands to reason that the
problems with ICE and the ERO deportation force will not end when the Trump Administration is over.

Regardless of who has held the presidency, ICE officials have publicly engaged in political activity
advocating more aggressive enforcement actions against non-citizens. In 2012, ICE officers sued
President Obama, asserting in part that the DACA program and the Obama administration’s policy to
exercise discretion in deportation were illegal (neither claim was vindicated).72 In the 2016 presidential
election, the union representing ICE officers endorsed Donald Trump.73 Going one step further, some
ICE agents created a website to communicate directly to the American people.74 The content chosen
included nativist propaganda from Breitbart.com and articles critical of President Trump’s failure to end
all “illegal immigration.”75 It would be unimaginable for a group of career officers at the State
Department to tell the American people who they should vote for and against while selectively
highlighting and omitting facts to further an internal political agenda; yet, this is exactly what ICE agents
did in support of Donald Trump.

In addition, ICE has lied to the public and even federal judges about its true mandate and actual
accomplishments. In March 2018, an ICE spokesperson resigned after refusing to follow his superiors’
instructions to falsely report that the agency had arrested 800 “dangerous people” when it had done no
such thing.76 ICE responded by sending agents to interrupt his television interview, an act the former
official described as an “intimidation technique.”77 Additionally, in November 2018, a federal judge
released 120 Iraqi nationals and indicated that he would sanction ICE attorneys who gave the court
“demonstrably false” information about the conditions they would face if deported.78

The intimidation tactics and lies speak to an agency infected with a culture that eschews good
governance. The military, by contrast, subjects its officers and members to court-martials if they obey an
unlawful order. The military has a code of honor and discipline to incentivize courage and integrity. ICE
seems to revel in the contrary. Congress cannot reform what is rotten, but Congress can end the rot by
defunding it.