Abolishing ICE would require an act of Congress that repeals the sections of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 creating the agency, redistributes its functions to other federal departments, and accounts for a workforce of more than 20,000 people and a budget that now exceeds $85 billion when recent supplemental funding is included. The president cannot do it alone. Several bills have tried since 2018, and none has cleared a committee vote.
Why the President Can’t Do It Alone
This is the most common misunderstanding about the proposal. A president cannot dissolve a bureau that Congress created by statute. The reorganization authority that once let presidents submit restructuring plans for expedited congressional approval, found in Chapter 9 of Title 5, expired in 1984 and has not been renewed. Even when that authority was live, Section 905(a) barred using it to abolish executive departments or independent regulatory agencies.1Congress.gov. Presidential Reorganization Authority: Potential Approaches
What a president can do is narrower. Agency heads can reorganize internally within existing law, priorities can shift, and functions Congress has vested in the presidency can be redelegated under Section 301 of Title 3. Reporting lines can move. A statutory bureau cannot be erased. Ending ICE takes a law.
What Congress Would Have to Repeal
Two statutes anchor ICE. Section 441 of the Homeland Security Act, codified at 6 U.S.C. § 251, transferred five old Immigration and Naturalization Service programs — border patrol, detention and removal, intelligence, investigations, and inspections — to the Secretary of Homeland Security along with all personnel, assets, and liabilities.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 6 USC 251 – Transfer of Functions Section 442, codified at 6 U.S.C. § 252, then created ICE as a bureau within DHS headed by an Assistant Secretary with at least five years of law enforcement experience and five years of management experience.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 6 USC 252 – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Repealing those two sections is only the start. ICE’s authority is threaded through dozens of provisions in Title 8 (immigration), Title 19 (customs), and Title 6 (homeland security). Every cross-reference has to be found and rewritten, or Congress ends up with orphaned language delegating power to an agency that no longer exists. The 2002 breakup of the INS is the closest precedent for the drafting job, and even with the statute spelling out the division of functions, the regulatory rewrite took months.4GovInfo. Aliens and Nationality; Homeland Security Reorganization of Regulations
The bill would then move through the standard path: committee referral, most likely to the House Committee on Homeland Security or the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, followed by hearings, markup, floor votes in both chambers, and the president’s signature. Vague drafting that told the executive branch to sort out the details would invite legal challenges from displaced employees and from parties with active cases.
Where the Work Would Go
Abolition does not eliminate the underlying work. Immigration enforcement, transnational criminal investigations, and government representation in immigration court are all legally mandated and predate ICE. The abolition bill has to name a successor for each function.
Enforcement and Removal Operations, which handles arrest, detention, and deportation under 8 U.S.C. § 1227 and the warrantless arrest authority in 8 U.S.C. § 1357, would most plausibly go to Customs and Border Protection or to a new office at the Department of Justice, which is where immigration enforcement lived before 2003.5Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Enforcement and Removal Operations6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1357 – Powers of Immigration Officers and Employees Homeland Security Investigations, which pursues drug trafficking, human smuggling, money laundering, trade fraud, and intellectual property theft, could be split among the FBI, DEA, or CBP depending on case type.7U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Homeland Security Investigations Priorities The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, with more than 1,700 attorneys, would fit most naturally at DOJ, though absorbing that many lawyers at once would strain any receiving office.8Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Office of the Principal Legal Advisor
A transition period, usually written into the abolition bill itself, would give receiving agencies time to absorb people, renegotiate detention contracts, and stand up new chains of command. Congress could also direct the Government Accountability Office to audit the handoff, which is standard practice for large federal reorganizations.
The Money Problem
ICE’s regular FY2026 discretionary budget request is roughly $10.9 billion. On top of that, a 2025 reconciliation package added $74.85 billion, including $45 billion earmarked for new detention capacity, with the supplemental funding running through 2029.9Congress.gov. Understanding the FY2026 DHS Budget Request That is the largest single investment in immigration enforcement in U.S. history, and it is already appropriated. Any abolition bill has to say what happens to that money — whether it follows the functions to their new home, gets rescinded, or gets redirected. Passing an abolition bill through the same Congress that just approved the funding is the political heart of the problem.
The detention footprint is part of the same question. ICE operates and contracts with roughly 180 detention facilities with contractual bed capacity above 60,000, and the FY2026 request allocates about $4.2 billion for custody operations alone.10Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fiscal Year 2026 Congressional Budget Justification Contracts, detainees, and staff all have to go somewhere the day the agency ends.
What Happens to ICE Employees
Federal law protects employees during a reorganization. Under 5 U.S.C. § 3503, when a function transfers between agencies, each qualifying employee in that function must be offered a position at the receiving agency before it hires from outside.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 3503 – Transfer of Functions The rule applies when one agency is replaced entirely by another.
ICE employees are also represented by the American Federation of Government Employees under a collective bargaining agreement covering professional staff agency-wide. Federal labor law generally requires a successor agency to recognize existing bargaining units and negotiate over the impact of reorganization. Congress can abolish the bureau. It cannot use abolition as a shortcut to a clean-slate workforce.
What Happens to 287(g) Agreements
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1357(g), ICE enters written agreements — known as 287(g) agreements — that deputize state and local officers to perform certain immigration enforcement functions, subject to federal training and supervision and paid for by the state or locality.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1357 – Powers of Immigration Officers and Employees Abolishing ICE would void those agreements unless the repeal bill transferred them to a successor. Participating jurisdictions would lose their legal basis for immigration enforcement activity until new agreements were signed. Jurisdictions that have resisted these agreements would see that lapse as the point.
What Happens to Pending Immigration Cases
Immigration courts sit inside the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Department of Justice, not inside ICE. But OPLA attorneys are the government’s prosecutors in those courtrooms, and the backlog stood at roughly 3,318,000 active cases as of early 2026. Removing ICE without moving OPLA would leave the government without trial counsel in millions of pending matters.
Transferring OPLA to DOJ would put the prosecutors and the courts under the same cabinet department for the first time since 2003, which some see as an improvement in coordination. Even a clean transfer would create disruption. New reporting structures, IT systems, and case management protocols take time to set up, and every week of delay adds to the backlog.
Bills That Have Tried
Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin introduced H.R. 6361, the Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act, in the 115th Congress in 2018. It would have created a commission to study ICE’s functions and recommend how to redistribute them.12Congress.gov. H.R.6361 – Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act It never received a committee vote.
In January 2026, Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan introduced H.R. 7123, titled the Abolish ICE Act, in the 119th Congress.13Congress.gov. H.R.7123 – Abolish ICE Act It faces the same headwinds, sharpened by the recent expansion of ICE’s funding. No abolition bill has cleared committee since the idea entered mainstream politics.
What “Abolish” Actually Means to Different People
The slogan covers a range of positions. Some advocates want to eliminate enforcement-focused immigration policing entirely. Others want to keep HSI’s investigative and anti-trafficking work but restructure it under a different agency with different priorities and oversight. Others use “abolish” as shorthand for dramatic reform — more oversight, narrower enforcement priorities, reduced detention — without literally dissolving the bureau.
The legal path differs for each. Full elimination requires repealing the founding statutes, transferring every function, and confronting the political reality of tens of billions in fresh appropriations. Restructuring, such as separating HSI from ERO or moving OPLA to DOJ, could be pursued through narrower legislation or, in places, through executive action within existing authority. The slogan is short. The statute behind it is not.