ICE fires back at Pro-Trump union leader who bashed agency and president’s pick for its chief

By Joe Davidson | Columnist January 8

The split between the labor organization representing immigration officers and the Trump administration has swollen, with a sharp agency rebuttal to union complaints made in a letter to the president.

In his letter to President Trump in November, National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council President Chris Crane called “what’s happening” at ICE “an embarrassment to the American people, and a stab in the back to the men and women of law enforcement who we know you support wholeheartedly.”

While Crane praised Trump individually — “Your courage on immigration enforcement in the face of public criticism and pressure is like nothing I have ever seen from any political leader” — the letter was an unusual display of disgust with leadership selected by the president, whom the union had supported in the 2016 election.

The National ICE Council and the National Border Patrol Council had endorsed Trump, even as the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO, their parent bodies, had vigorously opposed him and immigration policies they said were based on racism, Islamophobia and fear.

In the administration’s most detailed rebuttal of Crane, ICE on Thursday attacked his claims of “corruption and gross mismanagement” and “grossly incompetent leadership” as “baseless” and “factually inaccurate.”

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