Steve Schmidt is calling for the next Democratic president to dismantle Donald Trump’s immigration-enforcement system from the ground up.

Not reform it.

Not retrain it.

Destroy it and start again.

During an episode of The Warning, the former Republican strategist argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has become so deeply compromised under Trump that the agency is now “irredeemable.”

His proposed solution was sweeping.

Every ICE agent who completed a shortened 47-day training program associated with the Trump administration should be dismissed, Schmidt said.

Every government lawyer and federal official involved in removing FBI investigators from shootings involving ICE should lose their career.

And the Department of Homeland Security itself should be broken apart.

“There’s going to be a big purge of everybody who got in line with this,” Schmidt declared.

The language was intentionally explosive.

Schmidt was not describing an announced Democratic policy or an existing legal process. He was advocating for a future administration to carry out a large-scale personnel and institutional overhaul after Trump leaves office.

His remarks came amid outrage over two recent fatal encounters involving ICE agents in Texas and Maine.

The supplied report does not provide the full facts of those incidents, and responsibility for any unlawful conduct would need to be determined through independent investigations and legal proceedings.

Schmidt nevertheless argued that the shootings reflected more than isolated mistakes.

To him, they were the predictable result of an agency reshaped by aggressive political orders, reduced oversight and rushed training.

“I’m going to help you out here, I’m going to give you the right answer on ICE,” Schmidt said.

“Every single ICE agent, all of them, 100 percent of them who went through the 47 days of training in honor of Trump and were handed a badge and a weapon are done.”

That proposal would be extraordinarily broad.

Completing a particular training program does not by itself prove that an agent committed misconduct or violated anyone’s rights.

Terminating every person in that group without individualized review could raise serious legal, labor and due-process questions.

Federal employees may possess civil-service protections, union rights or contractual remedies depending on their position.

A president cannot necessarily remove thousands of employees through a single declaration without confronting statutes, administrative procedures and court challenges.

But Schmidt’s argument was not built around individual guilt.

It was institutional.

He believes the training program itself produced officers unfit to exercise federal law-enforcement authority.

Under that theory, the problem is not merely what specific agents did after receiving badges and weapons.

It is that the government lowered standards to rapidly expand a force expected to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.

If an administration knowingly shortened training while demanding more aggressive operations, Schmidt argued, the resulting force cannot be repaired through minor reforms.

It must be removed.

He extended the same logic to officials connected with reported limits on FBI investigations of ICE shootings.

“Every government lawyer, every agent in the chain of custody of the memos that has ordered a withdrawal of FBI investigators from shootings involving ICE, their careers are over,” Schmidt said.

The phrase “chain of custody” was unusual in this context, but his meaning was clear.

He wanted accountability to reach beyond frontline agents.

Lawyers who wrote the directives, supervisors who approved them and officials who transmitted or enforced them should all face consequences.

The supplied report does not reproduce the alleged memoranda or establish that FBI investigators were unlawfully removed from specific cases.

It also does not show that every person who handled such documents endorsed their substance.

Government employees may transmit, review or implement policies as part of assigned duties without personally designing them.

A lawful accountability process would therefore need to distinguish among authors, decision-makers, advisers and employees performing ministerial tasks.

Schmidt’s sweeping rhetoric left little room for those distinctions.

His anger reflects a wider concern that institutions can be corrupted gradually through compliance.

An order is drafted.

A lawyer approves it.

A supervisor distributes it.

Agents follow it.

Each participant may claim to have played only a limited role.

By the end, a policy with serious consequences has been implemented even though no single person accepts responsibility.

Schmidt wants to prevent that defense from becoming a shield after Trump is gone.

His message is that officials who knowingly participated in abuses should not be permitted to quietly remain in government and serve the next administration.

That principle has historical precedent.

Incoming governments often review political appointments, misconduct findings and controversial policies.

Officials can be fired, reassigned, investigated or referred for discipline when evidence supports action.

But Schmidt is proposing something larger than ordinary transition accountability.

He is calling for a deliberate purge of an entire category of Trump-era personnel.

The word itself carries dangerous historical associations because “purges” can involve retaliation based on political loyalty rather than proven misconduct.

A democratic restoration cannot replicate the abuses it claims to correct.

Removing employees solely because they served under a disliked president would politicize the civil service further.

Holding officials accountable for documented wrongdoing is different.

The challenge is ensuring that Schmidt’s desire for consequences does not become collective punishment.

His institutional target is even larger than ICE.

Schmidt said restoring federal law enforcement should begin with breaking up the Department of Homeland Security, the cabinet department created after the September 11 attacks.

DHS contains numerous agencies beyond ICE, including Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the Secret Service and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

A breakup would therefore require an enormous reorganization of federal responsibilities.

Congress, not simply the president, would likely need to enact major statutory changes.

Schmidt specifically called for abolishing ICE.

“This agency is irredeemable,” he said.

Abolition has long been debated within the Democratic Party and immigration-advocacy movements.

Supporters argue that ICE’s enforcement culture, detention practices and record of alleged abuses make meaningful reform impossible.

They favor redistributing its responsibilities to other agencies with narrower missions and stronger oversight.

Opponents argue that the United States still needs a federal agency to enforce immigration laws, investigate smuggling and remove people under lawful orders.

They warn that abolishing ICE without a detailed replacement structure could create confusion, weaken border and interior enforcement and leave essential investigative functions unassigned.

Schmidt did not provide a complete replacement plan in the supplied report.

His focus was moral and political:

The institution has lost legitimacy and should not survive in its current form.

That conclusion was shaped by the recent shootings.

Fatal encounters involving law enforcement require rigorous, independent investigation.

Body-camera footage, witness accounts, forensic evidence and agency records should be examined before conclusions are reached.

If agents used unlawful force, they should face discipline or prosecution.

If officials obstructed investigations, that conduct should also be investigated.

But Schmidt believes case-by-case accountability is insufficient because the system itself produced the harm.

That is why he framed the issue as a threshold test for future Democratic presidential candidates.

Anyone seeking the nomination, he argued, should commit in advance to removing the rushed-training cohort and dismantling the agency.

This places Democrats in a difficult political position.

Some primary voters may welcome a forceful promise to reverse Trump’s immigration policies.

Others may view mass firings and agency abolition as too extreme.

General-election voters may support stronger oversight without supporting elimination of immigration enforcement.

Republicans would almost certainly use Schmidt’s language to accuse Democrats of wanting revenge against law enforcement.

The term “purge” would appear in campaign advertisements repeatedly.

Schmidt may not care.

As a fierce anti-Trump commentator, he often uses absolutist language to argue that ordinary political responses are inadequate to the threat he perceives.

He views Trump’s administration not as a conventional government with objectionable policies, but as a corrupt system requiring institutional reconstruction.

That perspective explains his insistence that careers must end.

In his view, restoring public trust requires demonstrating that participation in abuse carries lasting consequences.

Otherwise, officials may conclude they can follow unlawful or unethical orders and simply wait for a new administration.

Yet restoration also requires fidelity to due process.

A future government cannot assume that every agent trained during a particular period is guilty.

It cannot punish every lawyer who touched a document.

It cannot replace one loyalty test with another.

The strongest approach would be a transparent review based on evidence.

Training records could be examined.

Use-of-force incidents could be audited.

Officials involved in suppressing oversight could be identified.

Employees who committed misconduct could face individualized discipline.

Those who acted lawfully should not be punished merely for their date of hiring.

ICE itself could be reorganized, divided or abolished through legislation after a public debate over which functions should continue and under what safeguards.

That process would be slower and less emotionally satisfying than the purge Schmidt demanded.

It would also be more consistent with the constitutional order he says he wants to restore.

Still, his fury captures the depth of anger surrounding Trump’s immigration apparatus.

Critics no longer see the controversy as a disagreement over deportation numbers or border policy.

They see armed agents, fatal shootings, weakened investigations and a government prepared to protect its own officers before establishing the facts.

Schmidt’s warning to those officials was unmistakable.

Trump will not remain president forever.

The people carrying out his orders may eventually serve under leaders who view those same actions as abuses.

And when that day arrives, “I was only following policy” may not be enough.