27 June 2018

It’s time to abolish Trump’s cruel immigration enforcement agency

To be clear: 42 of the 45 presidents of the US had no need for an agency as lawless and heartless as ICE.

A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is detained near the US-Mexico border on June 12 (Photo By Credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

On the morning of 23 February 2017, an activist called Sean McElwee came across a story in The Hill newspaper about an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who was being held against her will by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, despite being diagnosed with a brain tumour. McElwee, co-founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress, tweeted his disgust: “Abolish ICE, abolish ICE, abolish ICE, abolish ICE…”

Over the next 16 months, McElwee tweeted the phrase “abolish ICE” more than 250 times. Today, as Donald Trump claims immigrants are “infesting” the United States – and as shocking stories of migrant children held in cages in detention centres grab headlines across the world – the phrase has become a rallying cry.