Every American who cares about the rule of law ought to support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This means defunding, dismantling, investigating and prosecuting ICE from top to bottom. The agency is so morally corroded that there is no appropriate remedy but to abolish it. The agency is not only a threat to our nation but a direct threat to academic freedom at Brown — it is our duty to our nation and community to stand up. Join the walkout this Friday, Jan. 30.
Perhaps in the past, this column would have argued for comprehensive immigration policy reform instead of narrowing in on the abolition of ICE. But given the escalations in the past year, it has become clear that the agency is too laden with abhorrent values for any remedy other than termination. Border security has become a mere pretense for the agency’s primary objective: to serve as the president’s personal paramilitary force. Trump’s immediate defense of the ICE agents who shot and killed Alex Pretti — “Let our ICE patriots do their jobs” — sends a clear message: Violence is the job.
ICE’s actions — terrorizing and intimidating immigrants, deporting protestors solely for political speech and coercing Minnesota into complying with demands to hand over voter roll data — serve more to bully the president’s political opponents than to keep Americans safe. The military is accountable to Congress and the Military Code of Justice, but ICE is accountable only to other federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, both of which are led by appointees selected for their loyalty to President Trump.
It is not merely that the services of ICE have been abused by the president. ICE’s recruitment process seems designed to attract morally repulsive individuals. Its recruitment ads use slogans that smack of white nationalism, like “DEFEND THE HOMELAND” and “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.” Consider the expectations created for recruits when they see the action movie style videos of immigration raids and memes of immigrants marching in chains. Centrist think tanks like the Searchlight Institute say the solution is to “identify and weed out the bad apples,” but when the hiring process selects for bad apples, the only option is to get rid of the orchard.
If we’re serious about abolishing ICE, walking out on Friday is a must. Last week in Minneapolis, thousands of citizens took to the streets and businesses closed their doors to demand an end to ICE’s reign of terror. Americans across the country are following suit. A national walkout is taking place this Friday: no school, no work and no shopping. Here at Brown, students will host a rally at the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at 1 p.m. Cessation of economic activity sends a strong message to Democrats and Republicans alike, and the more people that participate, the louder that message rings out.
Mass strikes have been crucial to democratic movements in every region of the world because they hit the government where it hurts: the economy. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, even brief work stoppages by small numbers of workers can slash national gross domestic product by millions of dollars and measurably impact national labor force participation rates. Student strikes have also been pivotal to many successful democratic movements, from desegregation in 1963 Birmingham to anti-dictatorship protests in 2000 Serbia and 2024 Bangladesh. Imagine how much stronger an entire nation on strike could be.
ICE poses a dire threat to Brown’s mission of teaching and learning. When international students can have their visas revoked for nothing more than political speech, like Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, free speech on campus is chilled. Our University cannot effectively pursue its mission of “preserving knowledge and understanding in a spirit of free inquiry” if its students who are vulnerable to ICE’s aggressions live in fear of being deported for their speech. While we do not know the reason, at least one student at Brown has had their visa canceled since Trump took office.
Civil disobedience has risks. It’s rational to be afraid. But this is what the administration wants: Terror is their tactic. Perhaps, then, it is hope that is our greatest defense. In order to fight for the democratic spirit of our country, and for the intellectual spirit of our University, we must refuse to normalize a regime that treats political dissent as a deportable offense and state violence as a spectacle.
Power does not concede out of shame but out of pressure — let’s apply it.
Evan Tao ’27 can be reached at evan_tao@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
