David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, warned Democrats not to campaign on abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Calls to abolish ICE have risen following the killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively. But Axelrod believes it’s not a winning message.

“Not if it implies that there’s not going to be any immigration enforcement in the country,” Axelrod warned CNN’s Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar on Thursday. “I think people believe there should be. I think people believe you should come to the country legally, and if you don’t, there should be some penalty for that.”

Multiple politicians on the left, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), have spoken out against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement in recent days and called for the end of ICE.

“I am in support of abolishing ICE, and I’ll tell you why: Because what we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist,” Mamdani said on ABC’s “The View” last week.

Pretti’s killing on Saturday has also sparked backlash on the right, with some conservatives urging Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be fired over her handling of the incident.

On CNN, Sanchez cited a new Fox News poll showing that public support for abolishing ICE has doubled since 2018, rising from 18% to 36%. When asked if Democrats should campaign on eliminating ICE, Axelrod slammed the idea, comparing to it to calls to defund the police.

“The problem that we’ve seen before, when people said abolish the police or defund the police ... I don’t think most people who said it believe that there should be no policing function in cities, but the implication was that there could be. So I don’t think Democrats want to get into that again,” the former Obama adviser said.

“I do think they want fundamental root and branch reform, and if it means getting rid of the name ICE, which has become a very bad brand, that’s one thing,” he continued. “If it means that we’re just going to abandon immigration enforcement, I don’t think Democrats or Republicans would support that in large numbers.”