In my Take Back ICE, I wrote:
I would hope the leaders of ICE would speak up and strongly object to what the Demagogue in Chief has done with their agency but to date they seem to be intimated from doing what is right.
Some good news:
The political backlash against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has turned so intense that leaders of the agency’s criminal investigative division sent a letter last week to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen urging an organizational split…Though ICE is primarily known for immigration enforcement, the agency has two distinct divisions: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), a branch that carries out immigration arrests and deportations, and HSI, the transnational investigative branch with a broad focus on counterterrorism, narcotics enforcement, human trafficking and other crimes. The letter signed by 19 special agents in charge urges Nielsen to split HSI from ICE, because anger at ERO immigration practices is harming the entire agency’s reputation and undermining other law enforcement agencies’ willingness to cooperate, the agents told Nielsen.
The letter can be found here. My mayor may be interested in this proposed split:
We should abolish ICE. We should create something better, something different. But in the way it’s developed, it has become a punitive, negative tool for division and it’s no longer acceptable.
Now if we transform ICE into HIS – what is to become of ERO? I’m sure Trump and Session will still want some agents to do their sick bidding. If so, I think we need a new name for this group. Truth in advertising could call this group ICAA. One side point – we are hearing a lot about how this abuse occurred even before Trump become President. Let’s be clear – abuse of immigrant rights is wrong. I’d hope former President Obama addresses this.
DeBlasio should stick it to the city he is running.
My DNC following friend claimed ICE agents should resign because what they are doing is “immoral”…….
My reply was: “all the Catholics who were in SAC and the nuclear Navy in 1980 should have resigned when the US Bishops wrote a letter pointing out nuclear war was totally immoral”!
And in 1980 US had not had Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bush II and Obama to really make the US utterly unworthy of destroying the world in its death throes!