Dem
47
GOP
53
The immigration policy of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller is not going well on the legal front (see above, for just one example). It's not going well on the logistical front, either.
It would seem that not every high-ranking ICE officer is a Greg Bovino. Some of them believe in the mission, but also believe in the rule of law. That just won't do, in the view of this administration. And so, for the third time, the White House (really, Stephen Miller) has implemented what it calls a "purge" of the ranks.
It was announced yesterday that the leaders of five different ICE offices—the field directors of the offices in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego—had been relieved of their duties, and had been assigned to posts elsewhere in the United States. The administration can't fire anyone right now (see above); this is a clear attempt to get them to quit voluntarily. Speaking off the record, several ICE officials said that more "reassignments" are coming.
As it turns out, it's not easy to find suckers enthusiastic enforcers like Bovino. So, the administration's
new plan is to replace the field directors with officers who had been serving along the Mexican border. The thinking is
that if anyone is going to be willing to be rough with alleged undocumented immigrants, it will be the people who have
been on the "front lines."
And it's not just the upper ranks where things have not been going according to plan. It's the very lowest ranks, as well. The people running this particular show (again, Miller) do not seem to be particularly bright, but they do know that they need substantial manpower to achieve their goal of Making America White Again. So, the administration is trying to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, to go with the 6,000 already on the job.
Obviously, this White House is not very forthright about sharing details, but it's clear that the hiring process is not going well, and is not attracting enough applicants. The administration has tried to poach police officers from their departments. It has abolished the maximum age for new applicants. It has significantly reduced the intensity of the required physical fitness exam. And it's not enough. The administration has claimed that it's gotten 150,000 applications. However, it's double- and triple- and quadruple-counting people who applied for multiple postings. In fact, there appear to be only 50,000 actual applicants. Still a lot, but most of those people are not qualified, for one reason or another. If the conversion rate is similar to Trump v1.0 (when standards were also lowered), then those 50,000 will turn into about 1,000 actual ICE officers.
Even once those folks are hired, they have to be trained, which is no small thing. Meanwhile, morale is very low among the current staffers at ICE. No wonder; many of them are being sent, effectively, to invade American cities. Also, many of them are losing leaders they trust and respect in favor of people like Greg Bovino. It is well within the realm of possibility that the recruitment rate and the resignation/retirement rate will equalize, and the administration won't be able to expand ICE much at all.
There are two problems here, one more specific, one more broad. The specific one is that, these days, ICE is a crappy job. The skills and requirements are basically the same as for police officers (hence the poaching), but police officers can stay close to home, are generally paid better, and are not usually asked to go harass a bunch of innocent people in some faraway city. Also, "I work for ICE" is not a great conversation starter these days. So, it's not going to be easy to reverse the staffing issues while also carrying on the campaign of terror that the White House desires.
The broader problem is the one that happens every damn time with Trump: WAY over-promise, WAY under-deliver. It makes for a great talking point on the campaign trail to assert that Joe Biden/the Democrats don't take border enforcement seriously, but it's just not true. The things that can be done easily and humanely, every administration, Democratic and Republican, already does. They even do some of the hard stuff, as well. That means that to dramatically "improve" on such efforts, the current administration either has to get WAY better at the hard stuff (like finding drug dealers), or it has to get WAY more inhumane. Obviously, Miller and Trump have chosen Option #2, and it's STILL not getting them close to the ridiculously high target of 3,000 deportations a day. What a mess. (Z)