For GNU xargs I like adding -d\\n which handles everything except files with an embedded newline. Those are much rarer than files with a space, though.

Sadly, OS X xargs (probably BSD based) doesn't have that option, so I have an alias to do the same thing:

    alias xargsn="tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0"

   rm --preserve-root

It's one of the top aliases in my .bash_aliases file.