Amazingly, it turns out that sometimes all the guy in charge has to do is to remove impediments from his people and let them get on with the job. That's what President Trump is doing with Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, and it's working, as illegal border crossings are way down, and we are filling up C-17s with illegal aliens who are being repatriated back to where they belong.
In Chicago, that city's ICE Director is praising President Trump for, as he puts it, taking the handcuffs off.
A Chicago Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official praised the Trump administration for taking the "handcuffs off" the agency as officers continue to search for those with violent criminal histories.
"We're not targeting people in schools. We're not targeting people in churches. We're targeting people who are the worst," Chicago ICE field office director Sam Olson told "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday.
"There's a chance they're going to go some of those places, and this administration has kind of taken some of the handcuffs off of us in a way. We're leaving the discretion to our officers and our officers are trained to make good decisions out there, and we support them."
This should, of course, be a priority. It should also be a first step, one of many. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and the destination should be the removal of every person, regardless of criminal background, age, employment status, or who is in the country illegally. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. We have immigration laws. We must either enforce them or change them, but we cannot ignore them. The government, at any level, must not pick and choose which laws are worth enforcing. Citizens have some rights in this regard - see jury nullification - but our employees in government do not.
Olson lauded the Trump administration's "whole-of-government" approach to immigration enforcement as "amazing" and "unprecedented" so far, adding that other agencies – the ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals and the FBI – also have boots on the ground.
"Some things that have been difficult to coordinate before, because there's so many different agencies, we've been able to get everybody in the same room and get kind of real-time updates, real-time intelligence and real-time advice to make sure that we're doing this the right way," he said.
Good. This is how it's supposed to be done. Let's keep filling up those big, beautiful repatriation flights.
See Related: New DHS Head Noem Hits the Ground Running, Joins ICE Raid in 'Sanctuary' NYC to Nab 'Dirtbags'
President Trump's border czar, Tom "The Hammer" Homan, is focused on getting this done. The new Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, is clearly on board, as we have seen her actually out on the ground watching the troops work. So has Homan. That's good. That's leadership. It's something we've been missing. We certainly didn't see it in the previous administration of... What was his name again? Oh, yeah - Joe Biden.
There was never any doubt that the people on the ground, the men of ICE and the Border Patrol, were ready, willing, and able to get this done. The previous administration, by ignoring the law and the concerns of millions of Americans, hamstrung them.
No longer. It's a whole new ballgame now.
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