ICE agents are miffed at the Trump administration for talking a good game, but otherwise leaving them in a lurch.
On Tuesday, a new website was launched to air their grievances, chief of which seems to be that Obama holdovers left in place by Trump are proving to be a stumbling block to them doing their job, as spelled out in the letter of the nation’s immigration laws.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervisors in Philadelphia banned officers from wearing bullet proof vests during an operation in the dangerous “badlands” section in the city’s north, for fear of offending the immigrant community, the new website, jicreport.com, charges.
Meanwhile officers in one Utah city are required to give city officials seven days’ heads-up before arresting anyone — and by the time they go in, the migrants they’re targeting seem to have gotten a heads-up and taken off, the website says.
And if you miss the gist, they’re gone because somebody is tipping off the illegals to the coming raids.
The site was put together by the National ICE Council, which represents the nation’s ICE agents. The general idea is, Trump’s failure to back his own tough talk from the campaign trail has not been missed, and they are not happy.
“ICE Officers grudgingly admit that the only President they ever endorsed hasn’t kept his word, and many officers now feel betrayed,” the officers say on the new website.
ICE Council President Chris Crane, in an open letter to Mr. Trump linked on the new website, says he finds himself regularly having to defend the president to ICE officers who backed Mr. Trump during the campaign but now feel “stab[bed] in the back” by the administration.
Crane is willing to give President Trump a bit of consideration, regarding the failure to keep his promises as more of a breakdown of those who surround him, rather than a willful attempt on Trump’s part to ignore them.
“While officers view the President’s position on enforcement as courageous, the Trump administration has left all of the Obama managers and leadership in place, a group that ICE Officers know after the last eight years to be completely incompetent, corrupt and anti-enforcement,” Mr. Crane wrote.
“While President Trump did create an uptick in morale at ICE through his support of enforcement operations, tensions are on the rise between Trump’s army of Obama holdovers and boots on the ground officers in the field, as behind the scenes Obama holdovers continue to undermine law enforcement operations and wage war against their own law enforcement officers.”
It’s almost like campaign promises mean nothing.
During the Obama administration, when it was made clear that those who disrespect the sovereignty of the nation were far more respected than actual American citizens, some 80 percent of illegals were deemed “off limits.”
And let’s not forget Obama’s illegal DACA program, which Trump sided with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to protect.
Some of the previous restrictions were lifted under the Trump administration, but again, with so many Obama holdovers in place, enforcement is like pulling teeth.
The new website invites tips from Homeland Security employees who see malfeasance at the department, or who believe it’s falling short on its mission to protect the country’s borders and interior.
One early posting reports on as many as 500 ICE supervisors who the council says are using official vehicles for their own personal travel, each “gouging American taxpayers for approximately $5,000 annually in free fuel alone,” and on allegations of sexual harassment.
It’s an egregious abuse of the system. That’s not like taking company stationary home.
It does get more ridiculous.
Perhaps the most shocking, though, is the report out of Philadelphia that supervisors told officers to remove their bullet proof vests before attempting to make an arrest in the city.
The vests contain the officers’ markings identifying them as police, so without the vests they had nothing visible to show they were law enforcement. Neighbors ended up calling city police to report the men as intruders.
And sometimes intruders get shot.
That particular entry on the website suggests that the supervisors in this case should have been fired, and that sounds reasonable.
“Our own supervisors would rather see the bodies of their own dead officers full of bullet holes than offend an illegal alien,” said Officer Gabriel Cimino, president of the local union chapter. “This is the absolute madness that our officers in the field are dealing with every day. Will an officer have to die before President Trump helps us restore order to this agency?”
He’s right.
Trump made a lot of promises, but only revisits his promises from time to time. Meanwhile, there are people who had high expectations that are still waiting to see him come through.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member