Good News: ICE Discovers New Freedom To Deport

NY Times Ron Nixon, Nicholas Kulish, and Caitlin Dickerson probably thought they were writing a big slap in the face article against Donald Trump, but, this shows a federal government agency doing the job they exist as an agency to do

Immigration Agents Discover New Freedom to Deport Under Trump

I.C.E. has more than 20,000 employees, spread across 400 offices in the United States and 46 countries, and the Trump administration has called for the hiring of 10,000 more.

In Virginia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waited outside a church shelter where undocumented immigrants had gone to stay warm. In Texas and in Colorado, agents went into courthouses, looking for foreigners who had arrived for hearings on other matters.

At Kennedy International Airport in New York, passengers arriving after a five-hour flight from San Francisco were asked to show their documents before they were allowed to get off the plane.

The Trump administration’s far-reaching plan to arrest and deport vast numbers of undocumented immigrants has been introduced in dramatic fashion over the past month. And much of that task has fallen to thousands of ICE officers who are newly emboldened, newly empowered and already getting to work.

Here’s the thing: that’s their job. As their webpage says, it’s “what we do.” It’s what they were created to do, replacing the old La Migra, Immigration and Naturalization Services, otherwise known as INS. This new “freedom to deport” is just ICE being allowed to do their job.

Gone are the Obama-era rules that required them to focus only on serious criminals. In Southern California, in one of the first major roundups during the Trump administration, officers detained 161 people with a wide range of felony and misdemeanor convictions, and 10 who had no criminal history at all.

No criminal history other than being unlawfully present in the United States.

“Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of the orders,” the unions representing ICE and Border Patrol agents said in a joint statement after President Trump issued the executive orders on immigration late last month.

When one is free to do the job one was hired to do without the shackles of idiotic political squishiness, it certainly must make the workers happy. Of course, we have to have some negatives, because this is the NY Times

Two officials in Washington said that the shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged pro-Trump political comments and banter that struck the officials as brazen or gung-ho, like remarks about their jobs becoming “fun.” Those who take less of a hard line on unauthorized immigrants feel silenced, the officials said.

Hey, when your job stops being fun, it’s time to leave, as the old saying goes.

Agents are, in fact, predominantly male and have often served in the military, with a police department or both.

Three things liberals despise.

But arrests can appear dramatic, as agents arrive in large numbers, armed with semiautomatic handguns and wearing dark bulletproof vests with ICE in bright white letters on them. When they do have to enter a home, officers knock loudly and announce themselves as the police, a term they can legally use. Many times, children are awakened in the process, and watch as a parent is taken away.

The horror! Many times, children watch their legal citizen parent or parents be taken away for committing a crime by law enforcement. The only people at fault are the ones who broke the law.

After the arrests outside the church in Alexandria, Va., Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, wrote a letter to Mr. Kelly, saying the action “raises a concern that, unlike previous actions, ICE agents are detaining Virginia residents without cause or specific allegations of criminal activity.”

Were they in the country illegally? Then there was cause. It really is that simple.

There’s a bit more whining for a few more paragraphs, before ending with

Agents said that even with the added freedom, they would still go after the people who presented the greatest danger to the public. And what Mr. Sandweg called unfettered discretion, they called enforcing the law.

“The discretion has come back to us; it’s up to us to make decisions in the field,” a 15-year veteran in California said. “We’re trusted again.”

It’s a shocking proposition: enforcing the law. Especially in Democratic Party run cities, which have the majority of illegal aliens.

Crossed at Right Wing News.