In a stunning expose by Alternet it appears there may be friction between the Trump Administration and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency.
ICE Agents are the primary individuals responsible for all deportation cases in the Department of Homeland Security. A hotbed for authoritarian policies and practices, it had come under intense scrutiny during the Obama Administration where many restrictions were put in place to prevent agents from acting beyond their necessary scope of the law and into levels of abuse, which have been publicly documented over the years.
In the 2016 election, ICE enthusiastically, and for the first time, endorsed a Presidential candidate with Donald Trump. They thought it would be the first step towards putting them back in power without the pesky need for oversight or ensuring that human rights violations were not occurring. And so they began their mass hunt against people with brown skin, since how else would they obviously be able to find the criminals?
Good old detective work doesn’t get the job done. But racism and authoritarianism are good substitutes in most departments within the DHS.
However, now it appears that ICE Agents are up in arms over the fact that they cannot go far enough, or too far, in their efforts to snatch up as many “illegal immigrants” as possible in an effort to rid the country of predominantly brown immigrants, many who came here as children under the DACA program that are now being targeted.
A website with disenchanted ICE agents has launched, publicly denouncing Trump for not going far enough. The operators of the site are members of the National ICE Council, the same Council that endorsed Candidate Trump in the 2016 election cycle.
ICE Officers grudgingly admit that the only President they ever endorsed hasn’t kept his word, and many officers now feel betrayed.
Well, the tables have certainly turned. If members of ICE feel that Trump, an authoritarian leader who praises the likes of Erdogan and Putin, is hampering the ability of the already authoritarian DHS in conducting raids against mostly hard-working undocumented immigrants then who are we to stand in the way of progress. Let the authoritarians continue to fight it out.
