More than 10,000 illegal aliens arrested in five days. That's the number border czar Tom Homan dropped on Fox News this week, calling it a record for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ten thousand in five days. The agency has never moved that fast.
Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, heard that number and immediately called for ICE to be abolished.
The timing here is worth appreciating. Homan went on air with Dana Perino to announce the most productive stretch in ICE history — over 10,000 arrests in a five-day window — and before the segment was cold, Khanna was on social media demanding the whole agency be torn down and replaced. Not reformed. Not restructured. Abolished.
Khanna's argument, laid out in a video posted to X, centered on conditions inside detention facilities. "These people being detained are being denied basic human rights," he said. He described seeing a detainee with blood in his urine who was allegedly denied medical care, claimed there were rocks in the food, and said people lacked adequate clothing. "We need to stop funding ICE that's violating human rights," Khanna concluded.
Those are serious claims if they're true. But notice what Khanna didn't address: whether any of those 10,000 people arrested should have been in the country in the first place. The entire case for abolishing the agency rests on facility conditions — not on whether the enforcement itself is lawful, necessary, or supported by the public. It's like arguing we should shut down every hospital because one of them had a billing error.
Homan, for his part, didn't seem too concerned about the criticism. The border czar has spent the better part of two years rebuilding an agency that was effectively neutered under the previous administration, and the numbers are backing him up. Conservative Review, which first reported on Khanna's response, noted that the congressman has been calling for ICE abolition since at least February, when he appeared on Democracy Now to lay out a broader plan to dismantle the agency.
So this isn't a reaction to a new crisis. It's a standing position that Khanna trots out whenever enforcement makes headlines. The 10,000-arrest week just gave him a fresh news peg.
What Khanna's framing conveniently ignores is why those arrests are happening at record pace. ICE isn't conducting random sweeps. These operations target individuals who entered the country illegally, many of whom have prior deportation orders, criminal records, or both. The agency is doing exactly what it was created to do — and doing it better than it ever has.
The broader Democratic position on ICE has always had a math problem. You can't simultaneously argue that the border is under control and that the agency enforcing border law needs to be destroyed. If everything is fine, why abolish the enforcers? If everything isn't fine, wouldn't you want more enforcement, not less?
Khanna represents Silicon Valley — a district where immigration enforcement polls about as well as a rolling blackout. His call to abolish ICE plays to his base. But the 10,000 number tells a different story to the rest of the country. It says the system is finally working.
The "abolish ICE" crowd had four years to make their case from inside the White House. The result was record illegal crossings, overwhelmed border towns, and an agency so hamstrung it couldn't do its job. Now the agency is posting historic numbers, and the same people who broke the system want credit for diagnosing the disease.
That's not a policy argument. That's a reflex.
