The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has a history of horrific abuses, which have gotten worse under the second Trump administration. They include violations of civil liberties, large-scale racial profiling, and terrible conditions for detainees. Those abuses are of special interest to the Boston area, given the region’s large immigrant population and that the administration is apparently planning a surge in ICE activity in Boston.

ICE’s cruel actions have made the agency highly unpopular, with recent polls showing large majorities disapprove of it. But most Democrats, including most Massachusetts leaders, still shy away from calling for its abolition, likely for fear of being seen as “soft on crime” or against law enforcement. But there is a way out of this dilemma: Advocate for abolishing ICE and giving the money to state and local police.

ICE’s abuses are widespread. The agency routinely detains people — including many US citizens and legal residents — with little or no due process. ICE agents’ ubiquitous use of masks and their refusal to identify themselves often prevent accountability for abuses.

The massive extent of ICE racial and ethnic profiling is shown by the fact that ICE arrests in Los Angeles County declined by 66 percent after a federal court order barred the use of these and other similar tactics. As Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2022 ruling striking down racial preferences in university admissions, “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” If that’s what citizens want, an exception can not be made for government agents who have the power to detain and deport people.

Conditions in ICE detention facilities are often unfit for human habitation, with overcrowding, inadequate food, and denial of needed medical treatment. Some 65 percent of those detained as of June had no criminal record, and 90 percent had no convictions for violent or property crime. As a group, undocumented immigrants have much lower crime rates than native-born Americans.

Many of those ICE now seek to deport entered the United States legally. They lost legal status through no fault of their own, thanks to cruel government policies such as President Trump’s revocation of “parole” for Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans who fled horrific socialist dictatorships, and Afghans who escaped Taliban oppression. Even those who did enter illegally are mostly people fleeing horrific poverty and oppression; the overwhelming majority come from nations that are poor, oppressive dictatorships, or both. It is unjust to consign them to a lifetime of deprivation merely because they were born to the wrong parents in the wrong place.

Deportations also routinely break up families and do serious damage to local economies. Undocumented immigrants make key contributions to numerous sectors of the economy, ranging from agriculture to construction (evidence shows deportations increase housing costs, by expelling a key part of the construction work force).

Abolishing ICE would not end all deportations. But it would make them much more dependent on state and local cooperation, which would be a particular boon to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, like Boston, which seek to protect immigrants and value their contributions.

A proposal to couple abolition of ICE with giving the money to state and local police could mitigate the political obstacles that bedevil other abolition plans. Advocates could not be accused of being soft on crime. Moreover, thanks in part to the massive increase in ICE spending embedded in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the funds in question could pay for a large increase in state and local police, perhaps increasing their numbers by 10 percent or more.

Many studies show that putting more police on the streets can reduce crime. Indeed, diverting law enforcement resources from deportation to ordinary policing can help focus more effort on the violent and property crimes that most harm residents of high-crime areas. Deportation efforts, by contrast, target a population with a lower crime rate than others. They also poison relations between law enforcement and immigrant communities, making the latter more reluctant to report crimes to the police, for fear they or their loved ones might be targeted for deportation; in this way, ICE actually increases crime, rather than reducing it.

Some progressives might nonetheless oppose transferring funds to conventional police. The latter, too, sometimes engage in abusive practices, including racial profiling. I share some of these concerns and am a longtime advocate of increased efforts to combat racial profiling. But comparative assessment is vital here. Despite flaws, conventional police are much better in these respects than ICE, with its ingrained culture of brutality and massive profiling. They have stronger incentives to maintain good relations with local communities and don’t need to rely on racial profiling nearly as much to find suspects. A shift of law enforcement funds from ICE to conventional police would mean a major overall reduction in racial profiling and other abuses.

Survey data show most Black people (the biggest victims of profiling) actually want to maintain or increase police presence in their neighborhoods, even as they (understandably) abhor racial profiling. Grant money transferred from ICE could potentially be conditioned on stronger efforts to curb racial profiling and related abuses, thereby further reducing the problem. It should also be conditioned on spending it on combatting violent and property crime, and structured in a way that prevents excessive dependence on federal funding.

Not all money saved by abolishing ICE need be transferred to local and state police. But diverting at least a large portion of it could simultaneously solve a political problem, end ICE abuses, and help reduce crime.