By Paul Nachman
03/08/2019
During the sort-of shutdown in mid January, a "Senior Trump Official" (whose status was vouched for by the editors at The Daily Caller) wrote:
The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.
On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.
Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade.
[I’m A Senior Trump Official, and I Hope a Long Shutdown Smokes Out the Resistance, The Daily Caller, January 14, 2019]
Alas, the executive’s — and ordinary citizens' — hopes foundered. Nevertheless, his (her?) statement, obviously made practical by its anonymity, was refreshing compared to the routine, soporific blandness of official utterances by people in government.
But on March 5, an actual expression of understandable human emotion cropped up — mirabile dictu! — in a press release from a New York City-area office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. The release opens with:
During the month of February 2019, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal’s (ERO) deportation officers assigned to the New York Field Office arrested more than 20 criminal aliens throughout their area of responsibility, after they were released from local law enforcement custody with an active immigration detainer in place.
[ICE arrests more than 20 released in New York after detainers ignored]
For those new to the subject, here’s their explanation of detainers:
Detainers serve as a legally authorized request, upon which a law enforcement agency may rely, to continue to maintain custody of an alien for up to 48 hours so that ICE may assume custody for removal purposes. Pursuant to ICE policy, all ICE detainers are submitted with an accompanying administrative arrest warrant or warrant of removal depending upon the circumstances of the individual case. ICE places immigration detainers when the agency possesses probable cause to believe an alien is deportable from the United States.
They also provide a dozen examples of their arrests of aliens who were back on the streets because local jurisdictions had defied ICE detainers. Here’s one of them:
Got that? Westchester County’s Immigrant [sic] Protection Act. So Westchester County is an explicit sanctuary county, in defiance of 8 USC 1373. If you live there, you might want to attend a Board of Legislators meeting (next two are at 7 p.m. on Mondays March 11 and 25, 800 Michaelian Office Bldg., White Plains) and give them an earful during the public-comments period.
Where was I? Oh, yes — ICE issuing a press release that contains actual emotion. Here that part is:
Congress has established no process, requirement, or expectation directing ICE to seek a judicial warrant from already overburdened federal courts before taking custody of an alien on civil immigration violations. This idea is simply a figment created by those who wish to undermine immigration enforcement and excuse the ill-conceived practices of sanctuary jurisdictions that put politics before public safety.
Emphases added.
That’s consistent with what I've heard, that at least the immigration officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are patriots who actually want to do their jobs. So naturally they're frustrated with the monkey wrenchers infesting local governments and grievance groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
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