The point of a simple, memetic slogan is to rally people around a banner and create the impetus for action. The legislative specifics can and must be worked out, but that'll only come after insurmountable popular pressure is created.
"Abolish ICE" is moving people *towards* protests and supporting the Dems, in part because it's spoken in the uncompromising register of one who takes a stand. It's a specific demand, and power concedes nothing without one. It's a starting place.
I'd add this: we need to break people of the assumption that an organisation that's existed for 15 years is an eternal and immutable part of our government. We naturalise these things at a frightening pace, and we need to remind ourselves of our capacity to change them.
I'm all for the practical brass-tacks of legislating. But no one in a position of power is going to give a damn, much less write a bill and try to get it passed, unless you generate popular will and put an issue at the top of the agenda.
A simple slogan helps. The Dems (and the left, frankly) have been lacking that for quite a while. "Abolish ICE" does a lot of good work.
As to those who say "well, if we go back to the pre-ICE regime, that's still bad" I absolutely agree. And yet, what existed before, while awful, was quite a ways less monstrous than what we have now. Getting us to a pre-1996 system would be an improvement. currentaffairs.org/2018/06/unders…
So if you want measurable goals, well, there's your star to steer by. But don't hector people who are generating the energy you need for *any* political program to be successful.
If there aren't crowds, if there aren't reams of letters and emails, if there aren't politicos being harangued with the "abolish ICE? Yes or no" question, if this memetic idea isn't on the agenda at all, nothing will change.
Also, it's already having salubrious effects. It strengthens the will of local officials who want to resist ICE's dubious authority, it's exposing rifts in the organisation, and it's making it harder for them to do a (frankly, evil) job: latimes.com/local/lanow/la…
