Analysis of: How the ‘abolish ICE’ movement started – and where it’s going after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
The Guardian | January 16, 2026
The resurgence of the 'abolish ICE' movement following the killing of Renee Nicole Good reveals the deeper function of immigration enforcement within capitalist labor relations. ICE, created in 2003 ostensibly for national security, primarily serves to maintain a precarious, deportable workforce that can be super-exploited with minimal legal protections. The agency's worksite raids and detention apparatus do not eliminate undocumented labor—which remains essential to sectors like agriculture, construction, and service industries—but rather discipline it, keeping workers fearful and wages suppressed across the entire working class. The article traces how grassroots immigrant rights organizing, rooted in abolitionist traditions championed by scholars like Angela Davis, briefly captured mainstream Democratic attention in 2018 before being abandoned when party strategists deemed it electorally risky. This pattern—popular movements demanding systemic change being absorbed then neutralized by establishment politics—demonstrates how the Democratic Party functions as a pressure valve for working-class discontent rather than a vehicle for fundamental transformation. The party's subsequent rightward drift on immigration, including Harris's 'tough-on-immigration' stance and Democratic votes for punitive legislation, shows how both major parties ultimately serve capital's need for controlled, vulnerable labor. Significantly, organizers interviewed recognize that abolishing ICE alone is insufficient—the entire deportation apparatus and carceral system that disciplines labor must be dismantled. This represents a maturation from reformist demands toward structural critique. The contradiction between capital's need for exploitable immigrant labor and nativist political mobilization creates ongoing instability, with the movement's current resurgence showing how state violence can rapidly delegitimize enforcement institutions in the public eye.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Undocumented immigrant workers, ICE enforcement agents (state apparatus), Capitalist employers benefiting from precarious labor, Grassroots organizers and directly impacted advocates, Democratic Party establishment, Progressive lawmakers (Pressley, AOC, Thanedar), Working-class communities affected by raids, Conservative commentators breaking ranks (Kristol)
Beneficiaries: Employers in agriculture, construction, and service industries who benefit from a disciplined, deportable workforce, Private detention facility operators and contractors, Political actors who mobilize nativist sentiment for electoral gain, Tech companies providing surveillance tools to ICE
Harmed Parties: Undocumented workers facing detention, deportation, and death, U.S. citizen family members like Renee Nicole Good, Mixed-status families torn apart by enforcement, Working-class communities subject to raids, All workers whose wages are suppressed by labor market segmentation
The state apparatus (ICE) mediates between capital's contradictory needs: requiring immigrant labor for profit extraction while politically deploying anti-immigrant sentiment to divide the working class. Democratic Party leadership consistently subordinates grassroots demands to perceived electoral calculations, demonstrating how bourgeois parties contain rather than advance working-class movements. The power asymmetry between organized state violence and immigrant communities is stark, yet collective action—from 2018 protests to current rapid-response networks—shows counter-power emerging from below.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Demand for cheap, flexible labor in key economic sectors, Wage suppression across labor markets through worker precarity, Costs of detention and enforcement infrastructure, Economic disruption to communities from worksite raids, Private profit extraction from detention facilities
Immigration enforcement functions to create a tiered labor market where undocumented workers can be super-exploited with sub-minimum wages, dangerous conditions, and no legal recourse. This depresses wages for all workers in affected industries while maximizing surplus value extraction. The 'deportability' of workers—not actual deportation—is the key mechanism: the constant threat disciplines labor without eliminating it. Capital requires this labor while the political system generates nativist ideology to obscure class solidarity across citizenship lines.
Resources at Stake: Surplus value extracted from precarious immigrant labor, Federal budget allocations for enforcement vs. social services, Private prison and detention industry profits, Political capital generated through immigration discourse, Surveillance technology contracts
Historical Context
Precedents: Creation of ICE and DHS after 9/11 as security state expansion, Record deportations under Obama administration, 2018 family separation policy and abolish ICE protests, Historical use of immigration controls to segment labor (Chinese Exclusion Act, Bracero Program), Prison abolition movement's intellectual framework (Angela Davis), Cycles of nativist mobilization during economic anxiety periods
Immigration enforcement has historically served capital's labor discipline needs while providing ideological cover through racialized nationalism. The post-2008 period of neoliberal crisis intensified both the exploitation of immigrant labor and the political weaponization of immigration, as declining living standards were blamed on immigrants rather than capital. The bipartisan consensus on enforcement—despite rhetorical differences—reveals immigration policy as a site where both parties serve employer interests while managing working-class discontent through division.
Contradictions
Primary: Capital simultaneously requires immigrant labor for accumulation while the political system generates anti-immigrant ideology to divide the working class and legitimize state violence—a contradiction that produces periodic crises of enforcement legitimacy when state violence becomes too visible.
Secondary: Democratic Party claims to represent immigrants while consistently capitulating to enforcement expansion, Abolish ICE demands threaten to expose the entire carceral-deportation system, creating tension between reformist and abolitionist wings, Growing public support for abolition conflicts with bipartisan political consensus on enforcement, The killing of a U.S. citizen exposes how enforcement violence cannot be contained to its 'intended' targets
The contradiction between capital's labor needs and nativist politics is irresolvable within capitalism—it can only be managed through varying enforcement regimes. However, the current crisis of legitimacy could produce either expanded state violence to suppress resistance or significant reforms to restore enforcement credibility. The organizers' recognition that abolishing ICE must be 'the floor, not the pinnacle' suggests movement toward more fundamental critique of capitalist labor relations, though Democratic Party absorption remains a constant threat to radical demands.
Global Interconnections
The abolish ICE movement connects to global patterns of labor migration under neoliberal capitalism, where economic policies—often imposed by U.S.-dominated institutions—displace populations who then become exploitable labor in imperial core nations. The militarization of borders worldwide serves similar functions: not preventing migration but rendering it illegal and thus disciplining migrant labor. The surveillance technologies developed for immigration enforcement (facial recognition, data sharing) expand carceral state capacity against all working-class movements. The article's mention of the 'No Tech for ICE' campaign reveals interconnections between immigration enforcement, tech capital, and broader surveillance infrastructure. These technologies, tested on the most vulnerable populations, become normalized for use against all dissent. The international dimension also appears in how U.S. immigration policy affects sending countries, creating cycles of displacement and dependency that serve imperial economic interests.
Conclusion
The resurgence of abolish ICE represents a critical moment where state violence has delegitimized an enforcement institution in the public eye, creating openings for radical demands. However, the 2018 cycle's absorption by Democratic Party electoralism offers a cautionary lesson: without independent working-class organization and clear anti-capitalist politics, movements risk being channeled into dead-end reformism. The organizers' insistence that abolition must extend beyond ICE to the entire deportation apparatus suggests growing political clarity. The key question is whether this moment produces durable organizational infrastructure and cross-racial class solidarity, or whether it dissipates into symbolic legislation and electoral absorption. The material basis for solidarity exists—all workers are harmed by the segmented labor market—but overcoming decades of racialized division requires sustained political education alongside direct action.
Editorial Note: This analysis applies a dialectical materialist framework to news events. It represents one interpretive perspective and should not be considered objective reporting.
AI-Assisted Analysis | Confidence: 92%