With another government funding deadline looming, congressional Democrats can at least partly curtail Trump's thugs.

https://prospect.org/2026/01/13/how-to-stop-ice/


Federal immigration officers are seen near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, January 13, 2026, in Minneapolis. Credit: John Locher/AP Photo

ICE has frequently been labeled as America’s own Gestapo, but that’s not the only historical antecedent that we should invoke. It’s also, I would submit, a resurrection of the Klan, but this time with de jure, as opposed to de facto, state power. In its second flourishing—roughly 1915 through 1929—the Klan expanded to Northern states and directed its violence and threats of violence against not just Blacks but also Catholics and Jews, all of whom they saw as threatening the white Protestant essence of the United States. They were the tip of the nativist spear, which in 1924 led Congress to restrict immigration to the overwhelmingly white Protestant nations of northwest Europe.

The ads that the Trump administration is running to bolster recruitment to ICE’s ranks are pitched to white nationalists. One borrows the lyrics of a white nationalist ballad, which promise that “We’ll have our home again” if only we can restore it to its pre-immigrant purity. One social media posting shows a classic car parked on a beach, under the words “America After 100 Million Deportations.” In this case, the mythic past that fascism always invokes is that of the Beach Boys circa 1964—white teens on white beaches. Getting to 100 million, of course, means it’s not just immigrants but most of non-MAGA America that stands athwart our recapturing of white hegemony. By that standard, the killing of Renee Good was, if not exactly official policy, at least well within the administration’s meta-policy (i.e., conforming to Stephen Miller’s hatreds).



So how can we stop the violent maraudings of our 21st-century Klan? At the state level, some Democratic legislators have introduced legislation that would at least ban state police agencies from hiring ICE employees and former employees. At the congressional level, another federal spending authorization to keep the government open will come before Congress later this month; in theory, at least, the government will have to shutter most of its doors again on January 30. Could the Democrats refuse to pass it unless it defunded ICE? Not in the House, of course, since the Republicans hold a small majority sufficient to prevail over any Democratic modifications. But it requires only 41 of the Senate’s 47 Democrats to keep a bill from clearing the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold.

And the public’s opinion of ICE has tanked since they began raiding homes, workplaces, and communities last June. An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday afternoon shows that the share of Americans who support abolishing ICE has risen from 27 percent to 46 percent over the past year (with 43 percent opposed); 77 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents are ICE abolitionists. Other polling from YouGov shows that ICE had a net approval rating of +16 percentage points one year ago; today, it’s at -13 percentage points, with 62 percent disapproving (40 percent strongly disapproving) against 39 percent approving.

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