What are we for?

As Americans turn against ICE, let’s talk about where that could lead.

Protesters in Portland, Oregon | Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images

A new poll shows a plurality of Americans support abolishing ICE. This would be astonishing were it not a response to the truly astonishing things we’re watching the agency doing on the streets of Minnesota and in our own hometowns. I hope that the coming months see progressives discussing how our side can revive this supposedly ultra-woke demand and make it a mandatory position for any politician claiming to oppose the Trump regime.

To that end, I want to briefly write about the question the left is never supposed to ask when it comes to immigration politics. ICE is what we’re against. What are we for?

Migration politics never make sense. People are broadly supportive of immigrants yet worry about there being too many of them. The irrationality is rooted in the folly of nation states and national borders. I know that sounds like smug jargon, but it’s true. Borders are not just “unnatural”; they are so anathema to how the world actually works that just about every time a new nation is created it results in massive and sometimes genocidal transfers of human populations, followed by permanent panics that the borders are being breached. There are always people on the “wrong” side of borders because human beings inevitably migrate along with resources and opportunities. Immigration systems are always “broken” because they were never meant to properly function.

The left wing response to broken migration laws is to get rid of the laws. Abolishing borders is utopian. It starts from the premise that people have the right to move where they want–and demands that the societies accommodate that right. This is not a realistic demand, but instead a goal of a world we are working towards, a set of values we can articulate, and a yardstick for measuring what kind of reforms we consider to be progressive.

The right wing response to broken migration laws to get rid of the migrants, and anyone who stands with them. Criminalizing migrants has been the starting point of authoritarianism and fascism for over a century: those people are here illegally; any actions against them is justified; anyone who disagrees and stands with them is siding with crime over laws; any actions against them is justified.

From the perspective of the liberal capitalist order, both left and right are unrealistic and therefore equally fanatical. This moral blindness, this equal repulsion to fascism and utopia, is symptomatic of a center that isn’t capable of holding much of anything for anyone.

Some heads are furiously shaking: With my talk of abolition and open borders, it’s almost like I’m trying to squander this moment of widespread opposition to ICE with my ultra-radical phrases straight outta 2020. I understand the fear of alienating the moderate center that we desperately need to keep moving away from ICE and towards us. But to keep them on our side, we need to give them something to be for.

This is where I find abolition to be a useful framework for the left. Abolition is an articulation of values and goals that can guide a wide range of tactics, strategies, timeframes, and, yes, compromises, towards those ends. We value and want to expand the non-coercive parts of government that serve people’s health, housing, education, and culture. We oppose and want to reduce and ultimately end the coercive parts of government that threaten, detain, and murder people. Is it really impossible to build coalitions around these beliefs?

When the people of Minnesota take to this streets on January 23, there might be be hundreds of #AbolishICE signs on American streets for the first time in years. Across the country, a near-majority of people are feeling more kinship with non-English speaking Black and Brown people than with native-born white federal agents trying to terrorize them. Could this provide a foundation for an American political movement of solidarity beyond borders?