Janice Kephart is the Director of National Security Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Security DeBrief
On June 23, 2011, a press release was issued by the union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees stating that ICE “Union leaders around the nation issued a unanimous no confidence vote in ICE Director John Morton on behalf of ICE officers, agents and employees nationwide citing gross mismanagement within the Agency as well as efforts within ICE to create backdoor amnesty through agency policy. ICE Union leaders say that since the no confidence vote was released problems within the Agency have increased [emphasis added].” The full Union release is in my colleague Jon Feere’s blog.
Last year, I began a series entitled “ICE’s Mission Melt” that provided evidence of exactly why ICE agents are complaining at an unprecedented high volume about ICE leadership undermining not only their ability to do their job, but their job security if they try to do their job.
In June 2010, I made public an unreleased memo providing detail of ICE Union employees being kept from enforcing immigration law. The memo even spoke of unsafe policies that, “prevented [ICE officers] from searching detainees housed in ICE facilities allowing weapons, drugs and other contraband into detention centers putting detainees, ICE officers and contract guards at risk.”
This time PR Newswire carried the ICE Union’s strong statements. The basis for the second no confidence vote in a year by the union was another memo by ICE director John Morton, this time on prosecutorial discretion.
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