Democrats Built This Machine Too

Elizabeth Warren fumbled the easiest question in progressive politics. Asked whether she'd continue funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Massachusetts senator offered a conditional yes—funding with restrictions on behavior. A technocratic answer that misses the entire point.

The correct answer was no.

ICE didn't materialize from Trump's fever dreams. The agency was created in 2003 under the Homeland Security Act, signed by Republican George W. Bush but supported by a Democratic Senate majority. Seventy-seven percent of Senate Democrats voted for that legislation. The institutional architecture of mass deportation has always been bipartisan.

The agency's stated purpose was terrorism prevention. According to a 2004 Department of Justice report, ICE's primary mission was to "prevent acts of terrorism by targeting the people, money, and materials that support terrorist and criminal activities." That framing provided cover for something much darker. ICE was created by merging the enforcement functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service with investigative elements of the U.S. Customs Service. Immigration enforcement was baked into the agency's DNA from inception. The terrorism rhetoric simply militarized existing deportation infrastructure under the guise of national security.

One of ICE's first operational policies was Operation Endgame, launched in 2003 with an explicit goal of "removing all removable aliens" from the United States by 2012. A 2005 Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report found no clear documentation explaining why ICE needed to exist as a separate agency at all. An unnamed senior official admitted ICE was established "not with a focus on supporting a particular mission, but on building an institutional foundation large enough to justify a new organization." The deportation apparatus didn't emerge later through mission creep. It was the mission from day one, dressed up in post-9/11 security panic.

Warren's response reveals the fundamental dishonesty plaguing Democratic immigration rhetoric. Party leaders position themselves as defenders of immigrant communities while simultaneously funding the very apparatus that terrorizes those communities. They campaign on compassion, then vote for budgets that expand detention facilities and enforcement operations.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voted for legislation that increased ICE funding in 2022, 2023, and 2024. During that period, the agency's budget grew by $1.5 billion. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has consistently supported appropriations bills that expanded ICE's resources. When pressed by reporters about using the appropriations process to constrain the agency, both men refused to engage. Jeffries told reporters he was focused on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits. Schumer walked away without responding.

The numbers tell the collaboration story. ICE's budget climbed from $6.8 billion in 2017 to $10 billion in 2025 under Biden. Trump's 2025 budget pushed funding to $28.7 billion—nearly triple the fiscal year 2024 allocation. Democrats controlled Congress during multiple opportunities to defund the agency entirely. They chose expansion instead.

Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, a Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, stated plainly that he will not support reducing ICE funding. Representative Vicente Gonzalez, also from Texas, acknowledged the agency has been overly funded but dismissed defunding as lacking votes. Representative Jared Golden of Maine called the proposal politically unviable. Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida said he's not interested in going anywhere near defunding ICE.

The Biden administration deported over 1.5 million people between 2021 and the end of his term. Interior arrests under ICE increased substantially compared to Trump's first two years. The agency's budget reached $9.2 billion in fiscal year 2023, continuing an expansion trajectory that began under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

But the Obama administration represents the most dramatic escalation of ICE's use against immigrants. Between 2009 and 2016, his administration deported 2.7 million people—more than any president in history. The deportation peak came in 2012 with 409,849 removals, earning Obama the nickname "Deporter in Chief" from immigrant rights organizations. His administration expanded the Secure Communities program, which transformed local police departments into immigration enforcement arms by sharing fingerprint data with ICE. Interior removals in 2009 reached 181,798. By the end of his presidency, Obama had presided over the construction of a deportation infrastructure that Trump would later weaponize with even greater brutality.

Warren's proposed restrictions sound reasonable until you examine ICE's operational reality. The agency already operates under guidelines, oversight mechanisms, and legal frameworks. Those structures haven't prevented family separations, prolonged detention of asylum seekers, or deaths in custody. Adding more bureaucratic guardrails to a fundamentally brutal system doesn't reform it—it legitimizes it.

Progressive Democrats now calling for cuts acknowledge they lack support within their own caucus. Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois is preparing legislation to reduce ICE funding, but she's clear-eyed about the prospects. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York criticized the hypocrisy of Democrats who campaign against ICE while in the minority but funnel unfettered funds when in the majority.

Democrats rely on procedural distinctions to maintain their progressive credentials. They'll criticize enforcement tactics while authorizing the budgets that make those tactics possible. They'll express concern about conditions in detention centers while appropriating funds to build more of them. The performance of opposition without actual opposition.

The July 2025 budget bill allocated $75 billion to ICE over four years—approximately $18.7 billion annually. Two-thirds of that funding, $45 billion, will be used to detain immigrants, potentially more than 100,000 people per year. The $11.25 billion added to ICE's annual detention budget represents a 400 percent increase from the previous year and exceeds the entire Department of Justice budget request for the federal prison system, which holds 155,000 people.

ICE's abolition remains the province of the party's left flank, dismissed as impractical by establishment Democrats who prefer incrementalism. But there's nothing incremental about deportation. There's nothing moderate about militarized immigration enforcement. The choice isn't between abolition and reform—it's between accountability and complicity.

Warren could have used her platform to challenge the false binary of funding ICE with or without restrictions. She could have acknowledged that Democrats bear responsibility for constructing the deportation infrastructure that Republicans now weaponize with particular cruelty. Instead, she chose the path of least resistance.

The senator's answer exposes a larger problem within Democratic leadership. They've convinced themselves that technical adjustments to oppressive systems constitute meaningful change. They believe oversight committees and policy directives can transform an enforcement agency whose core function is surveillance, detention, and removal.

Immigration enforcement as a concept predates ICE, but the agency's specific mandate and operational scope represent a choice—one that both parties have repeatedly endorsed. Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress when they could have defunded ICE entirely. They chose not to.

Fascism doesn't require a singular authoritarian party. It thrives when supposedly opposing factions collaborate on the apparatus of state repression while disagreeing only on its intensity. Democrats didn't create a humane alternative to Republican immigration policy. They helped build the machine, then acted surprised when it was used exactly as designed.

Warren's answer wasn't a gaffe.

Immigration isn't a crisis to solve. It's a business to maintain. ICE's budget tripled to $28.7 billion. Private detention corporations run the facilities. Both parties keep the system broken because broken systems are profitable. Democrats and Republicans don't want immigration reform. They want funding cycles, contracts, and the circus that comes with manufactured chaos.

Fix the system and the money stops flowing. End deportations and the detention industry collapses. Create a functional immigration process and both parties lose their political talking points. Warren's answer protects the deportation economy. Reform would threaten the profit margins.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

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