ICE Agents Are Losing Patience with Trump's Chaotic Immigration Policy
Source: NewYorker
Last Monday, when President Trump tweeted that his Administration would stage nationwide immigration raids the following week, with the goal of deporting millions of illegal aliens, agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement were suddenly forced to scramble. The agency was not ready to carry out such a large operation. Preparations that would typically take field officers six to eight weeks were compressed into a few days, and, because of Trumps tweet, the officers would be entering communities that now knew they were coming. It was a dumb-shit political move that will only hurt the agents, John Amaya, a former deputy chief of staff at ice, told me. On Saturday, hours before the operation was supposed to start in ten major cities across the country, the President changed course, delaying it for another two weeks.
On Sunday, I spoke to an ice officer about the weeks events. Almost nobody was looking forward to this operation, the officer said. It was a boondoggle, a nightmare. Even on the eve of the operation, many of the most important details remained unresolved. This was a family op. So where are we going to put the families? Theres no room to detain them, so are we going to put them in hotels? the officer said. On Friday, an answer came down from ice leadership: the families would be placed in hotels while ice figured out what to do with them. That, in turn, raised other questions. So the families are in hotels, but whos going to watch them? the officer continued. What happens if the person we arrest has a U.S.-citizen child? What do we do with the children? Do we need to get booster seats for the vans? Should we get the kids toys to play with? Trumps tweet broadcasting the operation had also created a safety issue for the officers involved. No police agency goes out and says, Tomorrow, between four and eight, were going to be in these neighborhoods, the officer said.
The idea for the operation took hold in the White House last September, two months after a federal judge had ordered the government to stop separating parents and children at the border. At the time, the number of families seeking asylum was rising steadily, and Administration officials were determined to toughen enforcement. A D.H.S. official told me that, in the months before the operation was proposed, a major focus of department meetings was concern about the fact that people on the non-detained docketasylum seekers released into the U.S. with a future court dateare almost never deported. By January, a tentative plan had materialized. The Department of Justice developed a rocket docket to prioritize the cases of asylum seekers whod just arrived in the country and missed a court datein their absence, the government could swiftly secure deportation orders against them. D.H.S. then created a target list of roughly twenty-five hundred immigrant family members across the country for deportation; eventually, the Administration aimed to arrest ten thousand people using these methods.
From the start, however, the plan faced resistance. The Secretary of D.H.S., Kirstjen Nielsen, argued that the arrests would be complicated to carry out, in part, because American children would be involved. (Many were born in the U.S. to parents on the target list.) Resources were already limited, and an operation on this scale would divert attention from the border, where a humanitarian crisis was worsening by the day. The acting head of ice, Ron Vitiello, a tough-minded former Border Patrol officer, shared Nielsens concerns. According to the Washington Post, these reservations werent ethical so much as logistical: executing such a vast operation would be extremely difficult, with multiple moving pieces, and the optics could be devastating. Four months later, Trump effectively fired them. Vitiellos replacement at ice, an official named Mark Morganwhos already been fired once by Trump and regained the Presidents support after making a series of appearances on Fox Newssubsequently announced that ice would proceed with the operation.
Late last week, factions within the Administration clashed over what to do. ...
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Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ice-agents-are-losing-patience-with-trumps-chaotic-immigration-policy
lapfog_1
(30,058 posts)and find another way to make a living.
underpants
(186,384 posts)He made some pretty obvious observations
It was a boondoggle, a nightmare. Even on the eve of the operation, many of the most important details remained unresolved. This was a family op. So where are we going to put the families? Theres no room to detain them, so are we going to put them in hotels? the officer said. On Friday, an answer came down from ice leadership: the families would be placed in hotels while ice figured out what to do with them. That, in turn, raised other questions. So the families are in hotels, but whos going to watch them? the officer continued. What happens if the person we arrest has a U.S.-citizen child? What do we do with the children? Do we need to get booster seats for the vans? Should we get the kids toys to play with? Trumps tweet broadcasting the operation had also created a safety issue for the officers involved. No police agency goes out and says, Tomorrow, between four and eight, were going to be in these neighborhoods, the officer sa