Priorities

[dellinger63]

Originally Posted by Riot

"ICE has pulled a bait and switch, with local law enforcement spending more time and resources facilitating the deportations of bus boys and gardeners than murderers and rapists and at considerable cost to local community policing strategies, making us all less safe," said Peter Markowitz, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

Markowitz's clinic, the National Day Laborer Organizers Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman,

Secure Communities is "a beneficial partnership tool for ICE and state and local law enforcement agencies helping to identify, prioritize and remove convicted criminal aliens not only from the communities, but also from the country," Rocha said.

The Obama administration wants Secure Communities operating nationwide by 2013..

National Day Laborer Organizers Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman



The union that represents rank-and-file field agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has unanimously passed a "vote of no confidence" for the agency's leadership, saying ICE has "abandoned" its core mission of protecting the public to support a political agenda favoring amnesty.

The National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 7,000 ICE agents and employees, voted 259-0 for a resolution saying there was "growing dissatisfaction and concern" over the leadership of Assistant Secretary John Morton, who heads ICE, and Phyllis Coven, assistant director for the agency's office of detention policy and planning

The statement also noted that:

• The majority of ICE's enforcement and removal officers are prohibited from making street arrests or enforcing U.S. immigration laws outside of the jail setting.

• Hundreds of ICE officers nationwide perform no law enforcement duties whatsoever because of resource mismanagement within the agency.

• ICE detention reforms have transformed into a detention system aimed at providing resortlike living conditions to criminal aliens based on recommendations not from ICE officers and field managers, but from "special-interest groups."

• The lack of technical expertise and field experience has resulted in a priority of providing bingo nights, dance lessons and hanging plants to criminals, instead of addressing safe and responsible detention reforms for noncriminal individuals and families.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...eaders-of-ice/