You Want ICE With That?

Okay, now this immigration debate has just gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Numerous Democratic politicians, including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (hmm, wonder what they all have in common?), as well as New York Democratic House nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have all called for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau.

What?

It is true that ICE has been pursuing the policies of the Trump administration to crack down on people entering the country by means other than legal ones, and these policies have been punitive and unfair, but this doesn't reflect badly on ICE.  It reflects badly on Trump.  See, we need an agency to patrol or borders and regulate the way people come into this country.  In fact, we need an Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau to enforce laws governing not just how people enter this country but also how goods and services enter this country.  I would love to live in a nation and on a planet where we have entirely open borders, as if there were no borders at all, and as rock star Graham Nash once said, the fact that you see no borders when you look at a picture of the earth shows where our hope as a planet lies.  But we're not there yet - neither here nor elsewhere.  If you don't police and regulate the borders, then you don't have order.  You have chaos.   

As bad as Trump's zero-tolerance policy is toward illegal immigrants is, can you imagine how bad it would be if people crossed the borders without anyone patrolling them?  If you want to get a handle on the border, you don't get rid of ICE.  You change the laws and the policies behind it.  We need to reform ICE, not get rid of it, but at the same time we also need to reform our immigration laws to allow people to come in more easily and treat immigrants - especially asylum seekers - more fairly.  And the first step to dong that, at least the first step after getting rid of at least one Republican congressional majority in the 2018 midterms, is getting rid of Trump.

I do understand, though, that talking about abolishing ICE is a big political boon to the party.  The Grand Old Party, that is.:-O