Libertarian Party Chair Calls for Abolition of ICE Following Increase in Militarized Policing

Steven Nekhaila, the chair of the Libertarian National Committee, has called for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that current practices by the agency reflect an expansion of militarized policing that has continued to grow since the post-9/11 era.

In a January 24 statement, Nekhaila said that ICE and related Department of Homeland Security activities reflect a “warrior cop” culture rooted in the Department’s national security origins following the September 11 terrorist attacks. He warned that the blending of immigration enforcement with military-style tactics has shifted enforcement away from administrative civil processes and toward confrontational, “occupation-style policing” in civilian life.

“Until recently, immigration enforcement was overwhelmingly a civil matter,” Nekhaila wrote. “Visa overstays, border crossings, and asylum claims were processed administratively rather than treated as battlefield threats.” He argued that modern enforcement practices under the Trump administration frame immigration “as criminality itself,” which he said has expanded the scope of operations to include visa overstays, individuals in green card or asylum processing, and people “caught in bureaucratic limbo.”

Nekhaila’s statement was released the same day that 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was shot and killed by federal immigration enforcement agents as part of Operation Metro Surge. The Pretti shooting was the second fatal incident involving federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks, following the shooting of Renee Good during a January 7 operation.

Federal authorities said the agents fired in self-defense, asserting that Pretti approached officers with a handgun and resisted attempts to disarm him. However, widely shared video footage and eyewitness accounts have challenged that characterization, with critics saying Pretti was holding a phone moments before the shooting and attempting to assist a woman who had been pushed by agents.

Nekhaila condemned the expansion of federal authority through internal Department of Homeland Security guidance, which he said asserts that agents may enter homes without a judicial warrant using administrative authority alone and violates the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. He further traced modern enforcement practices to the broader militarization of domestic law enforcement following the Global War on Terror, which he said has led to surplus weapons, vehicles, and surveillance tools originally from overseas conflicts being transferred to federal agencies and local police departments.

According to Nekhaila, the normalization of military equipment and tactics within civilian law enforcement has produced a culture in which those tools are now being used against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. He compared it to a pattern of “mission creep,” in which authorities justified during one emergency are preserved and expanded during the next, eventually becoming “permanent, all-seeing, and unquestioned.”

Nekhaila also placed blame on both the political left and right for making this culture possible, saying that the factions’ opposing responses, with the left pushing back in the streets and the right embracing the legitimacy of state force, reflect what he called “a morbid waltz” toward unchecked authority. He warned that failing to challenge these trends would allow the expansion of the police state to continue.

“Do not be fooled. Every justification for state violence will be depersonalized, amplified, and systematized until it is a permanent feature of governance,” he wrote. “Abolish ICE. Reform the broken immigration system. Do not give the police state an inch.”