Sort of. The organization ICE didn't exist. The functions of ICE were executed by other organizations in the government and (correct me if I'm wrong) no additional responsibilities were really added to ICE whole-cloth; it's more of a post-9/11 consolidation of resources.
Abolishing ICE without considering the need for those responsibilities and what org, if any, should take them on is certainly risky. But technically, yes, we could abolish ICE and route things ICE does (immigration management, customs enforcement, non-military border security) to other executive departments (not necessarily back to their originating department, since instituting ICE also abolished some of its predecessor departments).
The Programs division [of INS] was responsible for handling all the functions involved with enforcement and examinations, including the arrest, detaining, and deportation of illegal immigrants as well as controlling illegal and legal entry.
I'm open to multiple ideas. Your idea of renaming seems to be useful for part of the process of rehabilitating ICE or whatever we're going to call it in the future.
You'd be more convincing if you demonstrated how the current purported "culture" problems were there the entire time pre-2016. And absent in INS before that.
The US has had Border Patrol agents for 100 years. From 1920-1940 they were organized under the Department of Labor; from 1949 to 2003, the Department of Justice; since 2003, Homeland Security.
ICE isn't border patrol; they don't patrol American borders. That's CBP, which is a separate wing of the DHS, and focuses on an entirely different area.
The predecessor, INS has an interesting history too. I'd experience some kind of small joy if a new INS were re-established "merging these previously separate areas of administration."
>INS, the agency ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred to three new entities – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as part of a major government reorganization following the September 11 attacks of 2001.
>Prior to 1933, there were separate offices administering immigration and naturalization matters, known as the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization, respectively. The INS was established on June 10, 1933, merging these previously separate areas of administration.
