Martin Luther King Jr. Warned About The Anti-Abolish-ICE Democrat

Edited by Sam Thielman 

IT'S MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY, so we read "Letter From Birmingham Jail." The timelessness of King's words resonates as an incipient death squad marches through Minnesota, prompting a certain strain of Democratic elected official and consultant to shake their head at the awfulness but refuse to redress its cause: 

You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative. 

King would recognize ICE and CBP on sight, and not only because their targets in Minnesota are black. The Greg Bovino of the mid-1960s was named Bull Connor. And every single one of the elected and billable-hour liberals who reject abolishing ICE would have been familiar to Dr. King from behind bars in 1963. You probably know this passage from "Letter From Birmingham Jail," but it deserves to be quoted at length: 

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Back then, "moderate" meant what "liberal" means today; consult Phil Ochs on this topic. Today the "white moderate" King discusses may not be white. They propose retraining ICE, as if that won't result in a force more proficient at kidnapping children, renditions to unfamiliar countries, detention-center homicide, and bullets in the foreheads of people who object to it all. They refuse, like Sen. Ruben Gallego, to confront ICE as it actually is, while affirmatively accepting the need for an invasive, interior deportation force that did not exist before the War on Terror permitted its creation. When Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says that "ICE doing ICE stuff is not what we're talking about right now," he is either deluding himself about what ICE stuff is and has always been, or he is lying to you out of fear of losing his power. 

What did Dr. King have to say about such people? King addressed the white southern clergyman of 1963, but could be talking about the Democratic power structure of 2026: 

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven" and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. 

Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are. 

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before.

The dominant faction within the Democratic Party is trying to stop ICE abolition instead of championing it. Every single official, consultant or journalist who joins onto that effort is a moral accomplice of Jonathan Ross, Greg Bovino, Kristy Noem and Donald Trump, whatever they might tell themselves. It used to be that elected Democrats facilitated the invasion of Iraq while telling themselves they were constraining the invasion of Iraq. [Again, the Christian church serves as a useful metaphor here. Christians who profess identical beliefs worship separately in much of the U.S. because of racial segregation in their denominations brought about entirely by white cowardice. So it goes among secular ideological coalitions, too.—Sam]

But the American Street, brought face to face with the enthusiastic nativist violence of ICE, is abandoning the cowardice of their elected Democrats and the avarice of their elected Republicans. Here we see the thermostat that transforms the mores of society. There has never been more support for abolition. "The level of fear among the community here is intense. It is all anyone is talking about," a Minneapolis friend of Van Jackson told him. In those words are the seeds of  transformation of the politics of security. 

The most urgent threat to the security of the American people—by which I mean everyone who lives here, citizen or not—is very clearly ICE, CBP and their allies in police precincts. That is the indisputable lesson of Chicago, Washington, Charlotte, Los Angeles, and now Minneapolis. Those "white moderates" of 2026 who deny it will ironically learn the lesson they are trying to teach by hewing to the traditional politics of security: When people do not feel you will protect them from their persecutors, they distrust anything else you have to say. 

Frankly, this is a political battle we need to have if we are to melt ICE once and for all. For the safety of our neighbors and ourselves, it is not enough to destroy ICE. ICE's facilitators and collaborators must be defeated and discredited, lest they reconstitute a successor to ICE to take up the cause of nativist repression. Whether you live or die, whether you are caged or free, they get paid either way. 

"I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future," King wrote. "I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom." 

THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT and the once-U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are fighting as never before. Ceasefires declared days or even hours ago are broken and fighting continues. I would not pretend like I understand the situation on the ground from more than 5000 miles away, but Damascus has pushed into Deir az-Zour—where the oil is, in other words—and Raqqa, closer to the heart of what for almost a decade has been an autonomous Kurdish quasi-state under American protection. With each territorial advance for Damascus comes worse terms for the reintegration of the Kurdish elements, which, per this al-Jazeera report, must now put their fighters and their claims on eastern Syria's oil wealth under Damascus' authority. 

What this will mean for the U.S. presence in Syria remains to be sorted out. But it looks a lot like Trump has thrown in with Syria's Ahmed al-Sharaa and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against the force the U.S. used to break the ISIS caliphate and deceitfully suggested would remain functionally independent of the rest of Syria. 

I WILL WRITE MORE ABOUT THIS LATER, but last night I finished reading Molly Crabapple's forthcoming book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. It is a resurrection of a crucial Jewish socialist tradition, but it's much more than that. It runs on an engine of deep political complexity and is fueled by a sensuality that most history books would never dream of attempting. You simply have to preorder this book—we'll be discussing it in the future.