An ICEy Reception

All across the Department of Homeland Security, particularly in the border control/immigration space, the signs of failure are everywhere. Not only is Trump’s vanity wall, which actually has not begun being built – claims of new “wall” are simply approved fixes that antedated Trump’s tenure – but working as a Border Patrol agency or an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent has become a fiercely unpopular job.

“Shortly after taking office, the president signed an executive order that called for the hiring of 5,000 agents. More recently, his administration pushed a proposal that calls for 2,750 more agents, law enforcement officers and staff. But Border Patrol can’t hire enough people to fill jobs that were available before. Even as Congress provides funding to hire 21,370 agents, the patrol is more than 1,800 agents short of that mark.

“Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said the agency’s inability to spend its current allotment undercuts the Trump administration's demand for more agents. ‘You make a better argument when you say, ‘Look, we could use 5,000 more because we’re at our cap,’ ’ he said in an interview. ‘But you’re not there.’” Politco.com, February 10th.

Images of young children, depressed, housed in cages and long-separated from their parents (pictured above, and it is still happening) have been the posters for Donald Trump’s border enforcement policy, often defying court orders and manufacturing dramatically unsubstantiated statistics implying compliance… with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Residents owning border-adjoining property in the reddest of the red states are watching an unwanted military presence running roughshod over their property, disrupting lives and ecosystems with abandon. They’re not happy. Meanwhile, technophobe Donald Trump’s medieval castle wall philosophy, when state-of-the-art surveillance and interdiction systems would be infinitely more effective, is increasingly polarizing the country. “Given me a 30-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 31-foot ladder,” is the derisive joke making its way in northern Mexico.

Meanwhile, an autocratic president, unable to get the appropriate elected body to vote for monetary support for a campaign platform, seemingly suggested by madman and indicted cohort Roger Stone, simply defies a vote in both houses of Congress and seizes the funds from money Congress authorized for very different purposes… to build a wall that will never be completed. Defying the American and international legal system (to which the United States is subject), not seriously entertaining bona fide asylum seekers (against the law, whether Americans like it or not), Trump injects further negativity into our immigration mess. As white supremacists cheer the President, residents brought into the United States by their undocumented parents in their earliest years – who know no other country – are facing deportation.

Border Patrol and ICE agents are no longer generally held in high regard among the majority of Americans. Perhaps they can live on the praise from Trump’s base, but life for too many agents is harder than ever; working for Donald Trump has dropped morale to its lowest levels since these agencies were formed. Trump’s hardline, at a time when undocumented border crossings have been dwindling for years, seems to be creating precisely the opposite effect. A “now or never” motivation for asylum seekers to attempt to enter the United States has amped up that category of border crossing, and concomitant difficulty recruiting new officers is making the job even harder.

But Homeland Security agents, ICE included, have other functions beyond immigration. We need their services. But decreasing trust of the overall agency has so damaged Homeland Security, now inexorably equated with Donald Trump bully-tactics, that it has rendered these officers much less effective. Donald’s threats, his false statistics and his defiance of Congress and the relevant legal system, have forced many states to deny his agents assistance across the board. The poster-state for defiance, by no means alone in this stance, however, is California.

“They broke up an international movie piracy ring, returned the hand of an ancient mummy to Egypt and helped arrest the world’s biggest drug kingpin, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman… Homeland Security Investigations, a branch within Immigration and Customs Enforcement, focuses on combating cross-border criminal activity and is billed as the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. While many of its investigations involve immigrants, including some in the country illegally, many do not.

“But its connection to ICE — at a time when the agency is under fire because of its role in deportations and enforcing President Trump’s aggressive immigration policy — has caused friction with some law enforcement agencies.

“In California, where a ‘sanctuary’ law , Senate Bill 54, went into effect last year to provide protection for immigrants in the country illegally, agents have voiced frustration over police departments pulling out from operations — sometimes at the last moment — as well as withdrawing from task forces and slowing down investigations.

“‘Now all of a sudden I have an agent in the street saying, ‘This police department doesn’t want to work with us because my cred says ICE,’ ‘ said Joseph Macias, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles… Trump’s hard-line stance on illegal immigration has provoked cities across the country to scrutinize agreements with ICE and, in some cases, end collaborations with the agency altogether.

“‘In the realm of everything that’s going on here in the sanctuary state with Senate Bill 54, it is absolutely making [agents’] job harder,’ Macias said. ‘The boots on the ground, the guys that are doing the work, they understand it. We never want to violate any of the Senate bill’s pieces that are in there, but we want to make sure our guys are safe.’

“One HSI agent recounted an operation last year that involved the arrest of a U.S. citizen in a narcotics investigation. Less than an hour before the man was supposed to arrive, LAPD officers were told to stand down, the agent said…

“The Enforcement and Removal Operations side focuses on enforcing immigration laws. Recently during an enforcement surge in the state of New York, ERO agents arrested 118 people for allegedly violating immigration laws. More than 100 were convicted criminals or had criminal charges pending, according to ICE… The confusion between the two branches is long running, and HSI has struggled with a ‘branding problem,’ said John Sandweg, who headed ICE under President Obama.

“‘There’s always been this perception that the ICE brand ... has tainted HSI as an organization and impaired their ability to do their job,’ Sandweg said. ‘One of the biggest things that plagues ICE at large is how politicized it is as a law enforcement agency, and that’s only gotten a lot worse, obviously, in the last couple of years.’

“Under the Trump administration, HSI received a directive to increase work site enforcement, which has played out with the arrests of immigrants in the country illegally at places such as a slaughterhouse in Tennessee and a trailer manufacturer in Texas.” Los Angeles Times, March 19th. Homeland Security chief, Kirstjen Nielsen’s recent testimony before Congress, actually attempting to justify the agency’s right to incarcerate innocent children, may have pleased her boss, but it made her entire cabinet-level agency even more of a global pariah.

Of all people, Donald Trump should understand the impact of a damaged brand. Increasingly those who once paid to use the “Trump” label on goods, services and real estate holdings are removing that name and distancing themselves from that highly polarizing brand. Just watching the revolving door at the White House, it is obvious to anyone who has ever run a large organization that Donald Trump just doesn’t know how. He is unable to instill pride in his workers, police or military, and the catchy slogans with his base have produced very little in the way of benefits for the vast majority of Americans. The election is not immediate, but it looms.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and as the world watches Trump’s steady popularity ratings, our stature as a nation tumbles to the lowest level in modern history.