“We used to look at things through the totality of the circumstances when it came to a removal order—that’s out the window,” the agent told me the other day. “I don’t know that there’s that appreciation of the entire realm of what we’re doing. It’s not just the person we’re removing. It’s their entire family. People say, ‘Well, they put themselves in this position because they came illegally.’ I totally understand that. But you have to remember that our job is not to judge. The problem is that now there are lots of people who feel free to feel contempt.”
Like many ice employees, the agent was a critic of President Barack Obama, whose push to standardize enforcement practice and micromanage agents, particularly during his second term, was a source of frustration at the agency. Yet with Obama gone, and the era of micromanagement over, the agent sees long-standing standards being discarded and basic protocols questioned. “I have officers who are more likely now to push back,” the agent said. “I’d never have someone say, ‘Why do I have to call an interpreter? Why don’t they speak English?’ Now I get it frequently. I get this from people who are younger. That’s one group. And I also get it from people who are ethnocentric: ‘Our way is the right way—I shouldn’t have to speak in your language. This is America.’ ” It all adds up, the agent said, “to contempt that I’ve never seen so rampant towards the aliens.”
The agent’s decision to allow me to write about our conversations came after learning that ice was making a push, beginning this week, to arrest young undocumented immigrants who were part of a large wave of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border in recent years and who, until now, had been allowed to live in the U.S. Rather than detaining these young people, the government had placed them in the care of families around the country. Most of them are trying to lead new lives as American transplants, going to school and working. ice now plans to pursue those who have turned eighteen since crossing the border, and who, as a result, qualify for detention as legal adults. “I don’t see the point in it,” the agent said. “The plan is to take them back into custody, and then figure it out. I don’t understand it. We’re doing it because we can, and it bothers the hell out of me.”
Cities that don’t let Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents into their prisons and jails will lose significant federal funding, according to an announcement Attorney General Jeff Sessions made on Tuesday afternoon.
This is the first time the Justice Department has officially put immigration-related limits on which cities can get lucrative federal funds that many cities rely on for law enforcement, known as Byrne Justice Assistance Grants. It means the Justice Department is keeping one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign promises to crack down on sanctuary cities, in the middle of a series of verbal assaults on the Attorney General.
The announcement stipulates three new qualifications for cities to be eligible for the grants: First, they must let ICE officers have access to their detention centers. Second, they must not block their law enforcement officers from sharing information with ICE about the immigration status of people they arrest. And third, they must give ICE forty-eight hours’ notice before releasing anyone who ICE has a detainer on.
Uh…isn’t that a Sikh?
Pretty sure he was an Arab.
Lots of folks apart from Sikhs wear turbans. And not a lot of Sikhs have Arab names.
Ok, thanks.
I can understand Misguided’s assumption though: The Sikh turban-style is generally fairly distinctive, with the pronounced “part” in the front… and that drawing shows a similar (though a little different) style.
The Physicist in question, Al Hazen Ibn al-Haytham, lived in the 10th century. Sikhism wasn’t born until about 1500 AD, combining parts of Islam and Hinduism.
Also - and I’ll keep repeating this till everyone knows - every Sikh male has the name Singh and every Sikh female had the name Kaur. In English they mean Lion and Princess - yes, every Sikh woman is a princess!
This (although with some rare exceptions, nowadays)
Thanks for the reminder.
With the current ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen due to expire on Sunday, Trump was given recommendations by Elaine Duke, the acting homeland security secretary, but has not yet made a decision on the details of any new order, the officials told reporters.
Miles Taylor, counselor to Duke, said she recommended to Trump “actions that are tough and that are tailored, including travel restrictions and enhanced screening for certain countries.” Taylor declined to say which or how many countries would be targeted, including the status of the six countries covered by the current ban.
White House spokesman Raj Shah said that while “we can’t get into decision-making,” the next step will be a presidential proclamation setting out the new policy. He declined to say when that would come, including whether Trump would act before the existing ban expires.
This makes absolutely no sense on multiple levels, but my first reaction is: We have a beef with Chad? Since when? And I doubt it’s a coincidence that Sudan was just removed from the list. Wtf is going on? Is some Trump insider invested in the oil industry there and wanted us to switch sides?
https://twitter.com/lawrencehurley/status/920359344109219840
Edit: text of the court order: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4111808/10-17-17-Hawaii-Opinion-Travel-Ban.pdf
Professional athletes mirror the federal government in this respect: they operate within a set of rules, and when one among them forsakes those rules in favor of his own, problems ensue. And so it goes with EO-3.
But they’re not even American! How can they do that!?
Oh crap, some island in the Pacific strikes again!
Trump will speak to the President of Hawaii and straighten this all out.
Hawaii better hope it suffers no disasters for the next few years.
A federal judge in Maryland early Wednesday issued a second halt on the latest version of President Trump’s travel ban, asserting that the president’s own comments on the campaign trail and on Twitter convinced him that the directive was akin to an unconstitutional Muslim ban.
U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang issued a somewhat less complete halt on the ban than his counterpart in Hawaii did a day earlier, blocking the administration from enforcing the directive only on those who lacked a “bona fide” relationship with a person or entity in the United States, such as family members or some type of professional or other engagement in the United States.