You can’t please everyone? ICE agents rebel, say Trump ‘betrayed’ them by leaving Obama’s people in place
With respect to immigration, critics have focused on the enforcement orientation of the Trump administration, as seen in the various immigration Executive Orders, dismantling of DACA, enforcement operations, public statements, etc.
But here is a new one. The Washington Times reports that U.S. immigration enforcement officers launched a website earlier this week demanding President Trump do more to clean up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying he’s left the Obama team in place and it’s stymieing his goal of enforcing the laws on the books. I can almost hear the ICE officers saying, “We want more immigration enforcement!”
National ICE Council President Chris Crane, in an open letter to Mr. Trump, posted on the site, said he finds himself regularly having to defend the president to ICE officers who backed Trump during the campaign but now feel “stab[bed] in the back” by the administration. Crane said he gives President Trump the benefit of the doubt but that those around the president — whom he doesn’t name — appear to be trying to shield him from hearing about the continued struggles at ICE.
“While officers view the President’s position on enforcement as courageous, the Trump administration has left all of the Obama managers and leadership in place, a group that ICE Officers know after the last eight years to be completely incompetent, corrupt and anti-enforcement,” Mr. Crane wrote.
“While President Trump did create an uptick in morale at ICE through his support of enforcement operations, tensions are on the rise between Trump’s army of Obama holdovers and boots on the ground officers in the field, as behind the scenes Obama holdovers continue to undermine law enforcement operations and wage war against their own law enforcement officers.”
KJ