A peek behind the curtains at ICE

 
Dan Cadman is a retired INS/ICE official with many years’ experience enforcing immigration laws back in that distant era when there was some actual enforcement of those laws.  He now writes for the Center for Immigration Studies, exposing case after case of malfeasance in our current immigration program. 
 
He applauds candidate Donald Trump’s promise to triple the number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deportation officers, and offers a fascinating inside look at how the US ICE of today developed, and how it came to be functioning as it does today.  The story is as byzantine as any movie Hollywood could dream up.
 
Here are some excerpts from his article of Sept. 7, 2016, A Closer Look at Trump’s Promise to Triple the ICE Officer Corps:
 
“Trump was careful to say that he would triple the number of deportation officers in ICE. That was a measured distinction — a recognition that ICE is itself divided into two somewhat incompatible functions. The two divisions within ICE are Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO — the 'deportation officers') and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI — the special agents). HSI probably has a bit more than half of the agent/officer corps within ICE. They are paid at a higher grade level. Once upon a time, HSI maintained the fiction that it did the ‘higher level’ immigration enforcement work while ERO was simply there to ‘pick up the bodies’. That was never really true, because when ICE was created the former U.S. Customs agents, disliking their shotgun wedding with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officers, undertook a hostile takeover of the investigations division and ruthlessly weeded out the immigration types, forcing them into ERO. Still, it recognized the need for at least a certain amount of maintenance work in the immigration arena. Even that facade has crumbled, in no small measure because this administration would much rather that the HSI agents do no immigration enforcement:   …
 
“HSI at the outset had a robust program designed to combat alien smuggling. This was in no small measure because it had inherited a seasoned cadre of anti-smuggling investigators from the INS. They too found a hostile work environment within HSI, a general lack of appetite for their work, and either voluntarily or under pressure migrated into ERO. Now alien smuggling efforts constitute significantly less than 10 percent of HSI's agent productive hours.  …
 
“Trump may not be fully aware of this ‘inside baseball’ look at ICE's structure and dysfunction as it has developed under the Obama administration, but it is clear that someone who is giving him advice on immigration matters is extremely knowledgeable about the current lamentable state of affairs; …
 
“Whoever it is that provided the advice to Mr. Trump, let me offer a word of thanks on behalf of the many Americans who are deeply concerned over the immigration vacuum that has developed, and let us hope that the next administration takes its responsibility to enforce the immigration laws seriously.”