The word is that ICE agents are sad. You don’t like them!
he reality of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign is far less glamorous. Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.
“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”
Poor babies.
Recently, they’ve been whining about a “700%” increase in assaults on ICE agents, but that isn’t as bad as it sounds — they’re phrasing the numbers to make them sound much, much worse than they are. It’s just the standard conservative persecution complex.
While ICE has previously stuck to publishing percentages, Melugin was given raw data, reporting 79 assaults against immigration enforcement agents between January 21 and June 30, up from 10 that took place in the same time last year.
For comparison, from January through May, the New York Police Department reported 970 assaults on uniformed officers in the city (granted, the NYPD employs about 15,000 more officers than ICE does—though Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would lessen the gap).
They’re not getting beat up. ICE is recognizing that the general public holds them in contempt and that their own organization is authoritarian and abuses its own members. I’m not going to feel sorry for them, though.
I recently spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their job or being subjected to a polygraph exam. They described varying levels of dissatisfaction but weren’t looking to complain or expecting sympathy—certainly not at a time when many Americans have been disturbed by video clips of masked and hooded officers seizing immigrants who were not engaged in any obvious criminal behavior. The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests, but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.
No mass resignations yet? That’s too bad. Crank up the pressure, everyone — not in the form of physical violence, but do let America’s brown shirts know that they are hated, that they are despised and hurting the America they claim to love. More effective than punching them (I know, that would be so satisfying, even if it puts you in jail) would be looking them in the eye, shaking your head sadly, and walking away to phone your representative and write a letter to your local newspaper explaining how wretchedly criminal the thugs of ICE are.
The GOP fascist regime plans to use the US armed forces, the army, National Guard, Marines etc.. to help ICE round up and deport migrants and the bycatch, which are random US citizens.
This has already been done in Los Angeles and now in Florida.
This would seem to be a violation of the law of Posse Comitatus.
It is illegal to use the US military as police forces in the USA.
It is against Federal law to use the military to enforce domestic policies.
This law was passed to keep the Federal government from using the military to wage war against its own citizens.
Expect the Federal government to be sued over these violations of Posse Comitatas.
And..Expect the plaintiffs to lose.
These days the US Supreme court doesn’t interpret the laws, they make new ones and abolish the old ones as needed.
If you have read the books or watched the show…
(ICE thugs roaming the street)
“SecUnit. Hostiles approaching. Eliminate the threat.”
“It is against Federal law to use the military to enforce domestic policies.”
The problem to me seems to be that these fascists don’t give a fuck about federal law. But what do I know.
raven @ #1
Who is going to enforce it? SCOTUS is totally corrupt so even if lower courts ruled it being illegal, the court would overrule them because reasons. The GOP in congress has also shown they’re unable to perform their constitutional duties with their lips firmly attached to trump’s fat ass. Who is left to say no and have will and force to make it stick.
Having all three branches of government being corrupt and lawless at the same point in time is something that was never discussed in high school civics classes.
I would have sympathy for ICE agents except for the things they do and the other ways to make a living.
They will be screaming “IT’S ILLEGAL! IT’S ILLEGAL! I WILL WRITE A STERNLY WORDED LETTER TO MY REPRESENTATIVE” all the way to the concentration camp.
ICE has $170 billion to play with. If some of their agents are upset about not being loved, tough luck, ICE can dangle hefty salaries (with benefits) in front of soldiers who recently ETSed and are looking for work in a slow job market. Or, think about all of the bad cops out there who would gladly thump some Hispanic heads just for grins. Hey, we’d do that for free!
ICE has enough money to build a nationwide network of concentration camps and hire 1000s of new employees to oversee the effort.
I hope we don’t come to a time when everyday Americans are asked, like we did to Germans in 1945, what did you know about what was happening in that camp on the other side of the interstate? You know, the one where people went in and never came back out.
@2 Raven: “Expect the Federal government to be sued over these violations of Posse ComiTATAS” giggle
I really do need to grow up. 😁 “It’s just a F*’n typo, Vinnie!”
“We all have skulls on our hats. Are we the baddies?”
@feralboy12 best comment
Maybe I missed the point of the article but my main take away was that NY may have too many police.
Surely the relevant metric would be the ratio of police:population, and New York is quite populous.
(It’s not at the top of lists using that ratio)
DHS border goons count being cursed at as “assault” – cuz they’re that tough. I bet that’s why the assault rate on ICE is so high. I wonder what they’ll count it as when a crowd gets tired of this crap and beats up a unit?
This is a simple force protection problem. But it hasn’t gotten that bad, yet.