Immigration Agents Enjoying New Freedom to Deport

While reasonable citizens would like to believe that edicts from the White House such as mass deportation are met with skepticism from those charged with enforcement, unfortunately the opposite appears to be true. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been quoted anonymously in various publications expressing excitement and empowerment about the new mandate, often at odds with police officers in larger cities.

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. Gone are the Obama-era rules that required them to focus only on serious criminals.

The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on Tuesday that the president wanted to “take the shackles off” of agents, an expression the officers themselves used time and again in interviews to describe their newfound freedom. “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.  Interviews with 17 agents and officials across the country, including in Florida, Alabama, Texas, Arizona, Washington and California, demonstrated how quickly a new atmosphere in the agency had taken hold. 

On Thursday, Los Angeles, a sanctuary city, asked that ICE agents stop calling themselves police officers, saying it was damaging residents’ trust of the city’s own police officers.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/us/ice-immigrant-deportations-trump.html