by Jacob G. Hornberger

January 29, 2026

In the wake of the cold-blooded killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, there are increasing calls for the abolition of ICE among leftists and even among some libertarians. And, of course, there is the customary mantra in the mainstream press whenever there is an immigration-related death: “We need comprehensive immigration reform.”

But the problem is not ICE, and the solution is not reform. After all, let’s not forget that while an ICE agent killed Good, it was two Border Patrol agents who killed Pretti. But the problem isn’t the Border Patrol either — or even the killers employed by both ICE and the Border Patrol. The problem also isn’t Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino, or Border Czar Tom Holman.

The problem, pure and simple, is America’s immigration-control system. It is the cause of our nation’s decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual, deadly, and destructive immigration crisis — and the brutal, ruthless, and deadly immigration police state that has long existed along the border and is now expanding nationwide and, in the process, making our entire nation a very ugly one — one that ultimately no foreigner will want to come to anyway and one that many Americans will want to leave.

As I have pointed out for more than three decades, there is but one solution to America’s long-standing immigration morass and the police state that comes with it: Dismantle America’s entire immigration-control system, which necessarily means getting rid of ICE, the Border Patrol, and all governmental measures whose purpose is to resolve the perpetual crisis that the government’s immigration-control system itself has produced.

In other words, with its immigration-control system, the federal government has created the immigration crisis. It then destroys lives, liberty, and privacy by using an ever-growing police state to address the crisis that it has produced. How’s that for a nice, little destructive racket?

As I point out in my new book  The Case for Open Borders: A Primer, America’s immigration-control system is a socialist system, one that it is based on the socialist principle of central planning. Rather than rely on free-market principles for the movements of people, as we do domestically inside the United State, the federal government plans, in a top-down, command-and-control manner, the movements of people across international borders.

This socialist central planning produces what Ludwig von Mises called “planned chaos.” Federal officials then use that planned chaos as the justification for their police state, which consists of an ever-growing array of tyrannical measures — ones that destroy life, liberty, and privacy — totalitarian measures like highway checkpoints without search warrants; roving Border Patrol checkpoints without warrants; violent raids on American businesses; warrantless searches of ranches, farms, and homes; encouragement of snitches; the criminalization of hiring, transporting, and caring for illegal immigrants, concertina wire hidden in the Rio Grande; the Berlin Wall along the border; eminent domain stealing of people’s property; forced deportation of immigrants to their home country knowing that death awaits them there; forced deportation to the Pentagon-CIA torture center in Cuba; forced deportation to the torture prison in El Salvador; incarceration in squalid detention centers in the United States; forcible separation of children from families; and the killing of people who dare to protest all of this immorality, evil, and tyranny.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, none of this is what America is supposed to be all about. It’s what we would expect from brutal, ruthless, evil, anti-God, totalitarian regimes. America is supposed to be about the principles of morality, religion, freedom, private property, free markets, and limited government.

For 36 years here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, we have been emphasizing a critically important point. There is one — and only one — solution to America’s socialist immigration control system and the immigration police state that accompanies it. That solution is open borders — the removal of all government restrictions on the free movements of goods, services, and people across borders — that is, the same open-border system we have domestically. It is also the only system that is consistent with capitalism, the free market, and Christianity.

If you have not yet purchased and read my new book The Case for Open Borders: A Primer, I invite you to do so. Also, please purchase copies to gift to friends who wish to get America back on the right track — the track toward liberty, peace, prosperity, life, privacy, and harmony with the people of the world.