The book of Amos tells us of a priest named Amaziah, who is depicted as something of a rival prophet to Amos himself. The book itself is full of Amos’ harsh words against Israel’s exploitation of the poor and greedy indulgence of the rich, as well as prophetic calls to repentance before God’s judgment falls on the whole nation. But Amaziah isn’t a fan of this kind of prophecy. He tells the king that Amos is raising conspiracies against him, and tells Amos himself to do his prophesying somewhere else, where it won’t bother anyone. “Get out, you seer!” Amaziah cries in Amos 7:12. “Go back to the land of Judah!” Amos does not take kindly to this advice and is not deterred from his message, which can be summed up by 5:14: “Seek good, not evil, that you may live.”
For as long as there have been prophets, there have been people telling prophets to shut up. Or, as we see with Amos and Amaziah, people telling prophets not to shut up, exactly, but to go do their thing far away from powerful, comfortable people. Prophecy, after all, is disruptive to everyone, particularly the powerful and the comfortable. The things prophets say sound extreme. Surely Amos, wailing in the streets about how “You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain” (5:11), knew that his message wouldn’t be well received by those who’d come to rely on such taxes. But they were the ones who needed to hear it, no matter how extreme the calls to repentance may have sounded. Such calls still sound extreme today. Calls like “Free Palestine.” “No blood for oil.” And, most relevant to this piece: “Abolish ICE.”
What is Immigration and Customs Enforcement for? If you go look at its mission statement, it’s clear enough: “[p]rotecting America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.” But we don’t live in mission statements. We live in the world. And in the world, ICE’s signature actions have nothing to do with laws or national security, which have withered and hollowed in conjunction with ICE’s gross swell of power. ICE agents have gleefully flaunted laws and seem to relish their status as a threat to the security of communities.
And as for public safety?
On Jan. 6, ICE’s official X account posted “GOOD MORNING, MINNEAPOLIS,” as agents sauntered into Minnesota’s capital city. Less than 24 hours later, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. Multiple videos on the scene confirm that Good was in her car and did not pose an apparent threat to anyone, despite Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s allegations of “domestic terrorism.” Vice President JD Vance said the agent “defended himself.” You can believe him or you can believe your own eyes, but not both.
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During President Donald Trump’s first administration, the cry to “abolish ICE” became common but not particularly popular. A 2018 poll found that while 57% of all Democrats viewed ICE negatively, only a quarter supported its dismantlement. Since at least 2010, ICE has enjoyed the support of the Republican Party, but even its critics in the Democratic Party tend to talk more about nip-and-tuck reforms versus outright abolishment.
On her 2024 presidential campaign trail, Kamala Harris said she wanted to “critically re-examine” ICE. When ABC News’ Martha Raddatz asked Senator Amy Klobuchar (D.-Minn.) if ICE should be abolished, Klobuchar hedged, saying: “I think what has to change are the policies … We are always going to need immigration enforcement, Martha, we know that.” There will always be Amaziahs on hand to tell the Amoses to tone it down.
But the last year has made something devastatingly clear: Those who called for ICE’s abolition were not dewy-eyed idealists or paranoid conspiracists. They were absolutely right.
ICE agents have ripped families apart, deported innocent people to countries they’ve never been to, tortured men, women, and children, and killed people. There is no amount of good ICE could do that would justify its existence, let alone the absurd amount of resources and lack of accountability provided for it by “Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.” ICE should be abolished. Many prophets were correct about this, and if we’d listened to them, a great deal of pain and anguish could have been avoided. Renee Nicole Good, an innocent woman, would still be alive today.
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Maybe you find yourself sympathetic to criticisms of ICE, but still wary of total abolishment. “Well,” a small voice inside might be saying, “then what? Who’s going to enforce the laws?” This argument would be more compelling if ICE were meaningfully enforcing laws instead of shooting and killing people in the street. Moreover, pragmatism like this tends to hinder our prophetic imagination—it’s hard to dream of a better world when you’re still tied to the old one.
As writer and prison abolitionist Hannah Bowman told Sojourners in 2023, “There’s something really liberating in being able to reject violent and death-dealing structures … And I think that’s something that we can have available to us when we start learning from and being open to this sort of renewed imagination of abolition.” It is notable, for example, that when Amos condemned taxing the poor, he did not offer his plan for a replacement tax system.
You might think it’s a little dramatic, calling the ICE abolitionists “prophets.” But prophets don’t carry cards or degrees. In fact, many of the prophets had very little about them that looked particularly prophetic. Amos, when defending himself from Amaziah’s accusations, said, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees.
“But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’” (7:14-15).
In other words, prophets do not come cloaked with power, respectability, or social cache. They only come with a message from God. That message might sound extreme, or “woke,” or unrealistic, but we ignore it at our peril. And so we raise the call again, urgent, moral, and, yes, prophetic: Abolish ICE.
ICE should be abolished. Many prophets were correct about this, and if we’d listened to them, a great deal of pain and anguish could have been avoided.
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