Bill Kristol Is Alarmed That a President Would Ship Accused Foreign Enemies to an Overseas Prison
Bill Kristol has had a change of heart. He is now opposed to the president sending alleged foreign enemies to rot in overseas prisons, and the claims of expansive executive powers and sprawling homeland security bureaucracy that enables him to do so.
“[The Department of Homeland Security] DHS, it should all be defunded,” Kristol said on a recent episode of The Bulwark Podcast, per Mediaite. “I’ve sorta come around to defunding [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE about a month or two ago. But now I’m just on the defund DHS thing.”
In a follow-up social media post, he reiterated the need to dismantle DHS and return to the pre-2002 status quo, where its various component agencies—which include ICE—are run out of other departments.
My sense is that the 22 agencies that were combined into the new Department of Homeland Security in 2002 generally functioned better before the combination. Isn’t it worth seriously considering whether it’s time to do away with DHS and disperse its various functions back to DOJ, Treasury, etc?
— Bill Kristol (@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:39:36.159Z
Kristol’s recent remarks are part of a trend of increasingly alarmed comments he’s made about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Its deportation drive has vindicated the “abolish ICE” movement, he’s said. Its use of a centuries-old law to deport alleged gang members to a Salvadoran prison is proof of its authoritarian designs.
Kristol’s journey from hardline conservative hawk to the still-hawkish anti-Trump liberal is a long and well-documented one, so his unsparing critiques of the second Trump administration shouldn’t be surprising per se.
What is surprising is the substance of Kristol’s recent criticisms.
Kristol’s break with the Trump-era foreign policy was largely in response to the president’s marginally less hawkish foreign policy.
His more recent criticisms of Trump are over his methods of going after illegal immigrants and alleged gangsters—methods Kristol was in favor of when the threat of the day was Islamist terrorists.
From his perch as the founder and editor of the ultra-hawkish magazine The Weekly Standard, Kristol was an early and enthusiastic advocate of the “global war on terror” and the expanded national security state needed to fight it.
On foreign policy, that famously meant pushing America to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussei
Article from Reason.com
The Reason Magazine website is a go-to destination for libertarians seeking cogent analysis, investigative reporting, and thought-provoking commentary. Championing the principles of individual freedom, limited government, and free markets, the site offers a diverse range of articles, videos, and podcasts that challenge conventional wisdom and advocate for libertarian solutions. Whether you’re interested in politics, culture, or technology, Reason provides a unique lens that prioritizes liberty and rational discourse. It’s an essential resource for those who value critical thinking and nuanced debate in the pursuit of a freer society.
