Dismantling Trump’s ICE

ICE leadership has abandoned professional law enforcement in favor of political theater, spending roughly three times the FBI's counterterrorism budget to target non-threats while violating constitutional rights and terrorizing communities. Immediate congressional oversight with public hearings, formal investigations into leadership misconduct, statutory enforcement priorities focused on real threats and accountability measures to ensure we have professional law enforcement instead of this rogue agency terrorizing our communities. NJ-07 communities need professional law enforcement that builds trust and targets actual dangers. What we have now is a political operation that destabilizes neighborhoods and wastes taxpayer dollars on performative crackdowns. We must fight back against the detention facility in Roxbury, reject ICE’s bloated and wasteful budget, and ensure all Americans are treated fairly and respectfully.

ICE enforcement has veered into territory that no democracy should tolerate. Armed agents entering homes, schools, churches, hospitals, and courthouses without judicial warrants is not public safety work. It is intimidation, and it corrodes the trust that actual law enforcement depends on. We must bar ICE from accessing private, personal, or sensitive spaces without a warrant signed by a judge, not an administrative form signed by another ICE officer. Due process is not optional, and it is not a loophole. It is the foundation of the rule of law, and federal law enforcement should be the first institution to respect it, not the first to work around it. ICE must not be allowed to operate detention facilities which treat individuals horrible and create massive risk for local communities, such as Roxbury. Alongside that, every Trump-era policy that encouraged blanket raids, stripped enforcement prioritization, or undermined due process must be formally rolled back. Enforcement resources belong focused on actual threats, not on vulnerable populations who pose none.

ICE agents must remove their masks when conducting enforcement. No federal law enforcement officer should hide their identity from the public they serve. Accountability begins with the simple act of being identifiable to the people you have power over, as local law enforcement already does. At a minimum, federal law enforcement should always equal or exceed accountability for local law enforcement. Transparency cannot stop at the agent on the street. Congress must use its oversight power aggressively, with public, televised hearings backed by subpoena authority, not closed-door briefings that let bad actors run out the clock. We must demand granular data on who is being targeted, why, at what cost, and with what public safety outcome.

Accountability at the top is not negotiable. Congress must open formal investigations into the conduct and influence of DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, border czar Tom Homan, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, and former DHS leaders including Kristi Noem. Substantiated misconduct must carry consequences: impeachment for officials the Constitution reaches, firing and prosecution for everyone else. Leaving office is not an escape hatch. Former officials must face criminal referrals, civil penalties, and professional sanctions where the evidence warrants.

Brian was one of the first federal candidates in the country to call for the impeachment of then-Secretary Kristi Noem, and that same standard has to apply to every person who holds these offices going forward. The question is not whether the politics favor action. The question is whether the conduct warrants it.

Where investigations uncover misconduct or incompetence at any level of ICE leadership, those officials must be removed and replaced with career law enforcement professionals committed to evidence-based public safety. For a decade we have watched what happens when federal law enforcement is handed to political loyalists instead of experienced professionals. The damage shows up in lives lost, families destroyed, and communities that no longer trust a badge.

ICE has become one of the most wasteful agencies in the federal government, and the waste is not an accident. It is the product of a privatized enforcement model that treats human beings as a revenue stream, intending to move them around like “Amazon Packages”. We must end the outsourcing of ICE detention and enforcement functions to private, for-profit contractors. Privatization inflates costs, weakens oversight, and shifts incentives toward filling beds instead of protecting the public. Federal law enforcement authority must remain in federal hands, fully accountable to the Constitution and to Congress. Beyond ending privatization, ICE must be required to publicly report the cost per enforcement action and demonstrate the public safety benefit of each dollar spent. Tying budgets to outcomes rather than to fear-mongering is how we restore fiscal discipline to an agency that has operated without it for years.

The core problem with ICE is that too much of its authority rests on discretionary memos that shift with every administration. That has to end. Congress must establish statutory enforcement priorities codified in law, with clear priority tiers focusing resources on actual threats rather than on vulnerable populations. Every agent chasing a farmworker or a parent at a school pickup is an agent not working the cartel case, the trafficking ring, or the terror financing investigation that HSI, DEA, and the FBI exist to stop. A serious enforcement agency focuses its people on the most dangerous threats facing our nation. Instead, ICE is focused on separating families. When priorities are set by statute, they cannot be rewritten by the next White House on day one, and the agency cannot be weaponized against political enemies every time the administration changes hands. The same principle applies to the rollback of Trump-era policies. It is not enough to reverse them. They must be barred from reinstatement without congressional approval, so that the progress we make is not undone the moment a future administration decides the rules are inconvenient. Accountability means rules that bind, not rules that bend.