Editorial: What would defunding ICE look like? Remember 9/11

Boston Herald, Boston Herald on Feb 19, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wouldn’t be a progressive Democrat if she didn’t want to eliminate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

She made it clear in a Sunday WCVB “On the Record” interview when asked if ICE should be defunded. “Yes,” she answered, adding that the agency has “more funding than all state and local law enforcement around the country combined.”

A follow-up question for the governor: What would defunding ICE look like?

We’ve written before about the arrests of criminal illegal immigrants, the litany of ICE apprehensions of people charged with murder, assault, rape, drug trafficking, child rape, etc. What would happen if ICE agents weren’t on the case? Do we imagine that local and state police forces would pick up the slack? Departments are stretched as it is.

Beyond that, there is the issue of what ICE was created to do when it was formed in 2003. As the Department of Homeland Security notes, “the mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE is to protect America from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.”

National security was top of mind in 2003, some 18 months after two planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York, another into the Pentagon and a third crashing in a field in Pennsylvania.

The planes had been hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists, who, as the ICE.gov web site notes “had entered the United States with visas; five of whom had overstayed their visas, and thus, were in the U.S. illegally.”

Nearly 25 years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and a generation has grown up with it in the rear view. The shock that we could be attacked on our own soil by people who infiltrated the country with the purpose of attacking it has faded. Old news. Bringing up terrorism is “fearmongering.”

If only that were true.

Those who wish destruction on the U.S. haven’t stopped hating, and hoping for an opening.

In 2024, Republican Chairmen of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, Accountability, and the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence sent a letter demanding answers from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray following reports of three Palestinian nationals and one Turkish national who were detained after illegally crossing the Southwest border and were found to have terrorist ties.

The chairmen wrote: “These recent arrests highlight a systemic pattern in the rise of known or suspected terrorists attempting to, and successfully, crossing the Southwest border. Just two months ago, media reported that eight Tajikistanis with ties to ISIS were arrested in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia after they had illegally crossed the border. Weeks prior, the Department identified over 400 migrants who crossed into the United States with the help of an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network. The whereabouts of more than 50 individuals within this group remains unknown.”

Defunding ICE waves a white flag to terrorists looking for their next chance.