This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 2, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Getting rid of immigration and customs enforcement may be a good idea, but doing so requires shrinking federal authority.

So says Alex Narasten, immigration policy analysts at the Cato Institute, he discusses how he would shrink and or eliminate the agency.

It has long been a conservative, I guess bugaboo to get rid of the Department of Education and you sort of draw a parallel

between a lot of groups that are trying to get rid of immigration and customs enforcement or the abolish ice and the federal role,

legitimate or otherwise, in engaging in these kinds of practices.

So on the issue of ICE, is there anyone who is actively supporting ending this agency who's really provided a detailed analysis of how you would actually go about

dismantling this agency and the underlying authorities? I haven't seen anybody who's attempted to do both

except for myself. It's a complicated issue because

ICE is a large part of the Department of Homeland Security and it has a role in

deporting illegal immigrants of all types either you know peaceful people who just broke immigration laws or people who are serious

criminals. But the main problem is that just abolishing ICE does not remove the underlying laws that allow the federal government to

deport people whose only offense is breaking immigration laws. So

abolishing eyes by itself, but keeping the power there in the government will guarantee

that that power will just eventually transfer to another government agency. And so I don't think it will have accomplished what

its proponents wanted to. Okay so in your analysis what do you think should be

the powers that go away if not to abolish the agency to reduce its

authority to engage in the kinds of policing that it does and why.

The main power that I'd like to see ICE lose is the power to remove people who are

zero criminal convictions or any allegations of crimes that they have committed at all.

There are two main portions of ICE.

...