I am assuming ICE is "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement". I am not from USA but why every comment here is implying ICE to be some evil thing.
Because there are reports of ICE doing inhumane things toward the people they have detained.
1) Children are being separated from families.
2) Children are dying under ICE facilities.
3) The jailing of asylum seekers.
These are the few things that lead many people to believe ICE is evil.
Where as the other side seems to be concentrating on the illegal immigrants.
It also come down to the morality of what they're doing and if this is similar to internment camp or concentration camp.
This was a quote I thought relevant, however because I don't think it was rainbows and unicorns under Obama either:
"The Obama administration did detain families together — some indefinitely — in hopes of deterring future migrants back in 2014, earning protests and public outrage at the time." [1]
[1]https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/...
>By the numbers: Under the Obama administration, total ICE deportations were above 385,000 each year in fiscal years 2009-2011, and hit a high of 409,849 in fiscal 2012. The numbers dropped to below 250,000 in fiscal years 2015 and 2016.
>Under Trump, ICE deportations fell to 226,119 in fiscal 2017, then ticked up to over 250,000 in fiscal 2018 and hit a Trump administration high of 282,242 this fiscal year (as of June).
Edit: I'm not saying I support Trump or ICE, my point is that Obama was hardly a leftist.
Read again. Nobody asked that.
But the Right is the only place that that happens.
> this has been an ongoing problem for a while.
No, the family separation policy has not been going on for a while; the Obama policy was not to detain illegal crossers with children (absent some other reason for detention), specifically to avoid that, and not to force legal asylum-seekers away from standard border crossings to force them to be illegal crossers in the first place.
That's not too say that there weren't humanitarian problems at the border under Obama, but they weren't at the same level as those deliberately created by Trump policies.
The rate of deportations wasn't the issue, the incidence and conditions of detention of children was the issue; the incidence of that was not as high, nor the conditions as bad, under Obama. But, even so:
> and hit a Trump administration high of 282,242 this fiscal year (as of June).
The federal fiscal years ends at the end of September, so “as of June” is 8-9 months of the year, depending on whether it's June 1, June 30, or somewhere in between, so it's on pace for 376k-423k, assuming a flat line throughout the year though continuing increase throughout the year might be more consistent with the year over year change. So, Trump started low in fiscal 2017 (which started under Obama and occurred largely while Trump was still getting people in place, with immigration policy focussed on fighting over the Muslim ban), and has rapidly reversed the deportation declines of the last 4 years of the Obama administration in the two years since, coming back up to a pace around or exceeding Obama’s peak year. So even if deportation numbers were the issue, your presentation would be misleading.
This certainly was not true and you have not provided sources saying so.
Not really. Here are some things that changed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/politics/fact-check-tr...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/border-patrol-agent-deta...
The editorial also neglects to mention that our facilities are greatly over capacity, that this change will make that much much worse, and that thanks to the backlog of immigration cases these families would have to be in these facilities for 5 years or more. To say nothing of the abuses and poor conditions.
And, once again, these families seeking asylum have not committed any crime, they have done nothing illegal.
That is not correct. Even sites seeking to argue against the high rates of skipping asylum hearings put their no-show figures at 40-50%: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/26/how-many-...
There are many issues, yes. Why can't you give the administration credit for fixing one of them? Why point to another problem and say, "but this isn't fixed yet!"
Granted, there have been a large increase in the number of people who skip their asylum hearings. From 2013 to 2017 this figure was lower, averaging ~44%. More recent samples put this figure in the 70% range and by some estimates even into the 90% range.
We could have ICE deport people who miss their hearings but ICE raids generate even more negative PR than detaining people at the border.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/world/us-asylum-denial-rates-...
There are a lot of factors involved in those numbers. For starters, immigration court does not provide public defenders. If you can't afford a lawyer, and can't find a lawyer willing to work pro bono, you have to represent yourself. Yes, even if you are a minor. And having an attorney, according to your article, makes it 5x more likely for your claim to be accepted.
There's also the fact that standards for being granted asylum can be arbitrary and not subject to proper review. Immigration judges work for the DOJ, not the judicial system, and are appointed by the Attorney General. The Attorney General also has fairly broad powers to increase the burden of proof for asylum cases, and limiting the circumstances in which an asylum claim is valid. The AG can also directly override the decisions of judges and deny asylum. For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/ag-barr-using-u...
Yes they are, illegally entering the United States is breaking the law.
We could entertain either or both of:
A. Entering the US is not breaking any laws, no matter the manner in which it is accomplished.
B. Applying for asylum grants an amnesty for the laws broken while entering the US.
Crossing into the US illegally is by definition illegal. Misdemeanor, to be exact.
So one border guard does something, and it's okay to say "they do things like this"?
Isn't that exactly the argument Trump makes about illegal immigrants comitting crimes?
Also note that ICE doesn't just enforce immigration laws, they also do things like this: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/missouri-felon-indicted-se...
Officers executed a search warrant at Lee’s residence and found numerous firearms, ammunition, firearm suppressors, suspected methamphetamine, marijuana, suspected stolen farm equipment, and a large amount of cash. Lee told officers that he received 10 to15 past deliveries of the selector switches, and that he converted and successfully fired a Glock pistol as a fully automatic firearm.
I'd rather take the chance that those several other law enforcement agencies couldn't have worked it out on their own than have thousands of innocent families torn apart and kept in cages.
Conversely, would eliminating HSI prevent such reprehensible treatment of migrant families? Wouldn't the abuses just pop up elsewhere, given the agenda of the current administration?
It sure seems that way. And people often forget that we didn't have these agencies at all before 9/11, and we did just fine. Metal detectors and stronger cockpit doors are well and good, but what we have are agencies that were created in a time of extreme fear, and have held on to fear as their guiding ethos.
> Wouldn't the abuses just pop up elsewhere, given the agenda of the current administration?
Maybe, I don't know. But the problem right now is they have an excuse. We're giving people license to commit whatever thuggish, nationalistic fantasies they want, all sanctioned under some vague "rule of law" argument where the letter has far, far outstripped the spirit. And what we end up with are goon squads harassing and imprisoning innocents based on technicalities. I don't think that sort of thing could persist at this scale without the pretense that these agencies provide.
I'll put it this way: I live in southern Texas. I'm who they're allegedly protecting. And if ICE were abolished overnight, I would throw a party.
ICE wasn't created out of thin air, it was formed by merging and reorganizing existing organizations including Customs and INS.
> We're giving people license to commit whatever thuggish, nationalistic fantasies they want, all sanctioned under some vague "rule of law" argument where the letter has far, far outstripped the spirit.
I agree this is happening and we need to do something to stop it. At the same time, I don't believe this is the only thing that's happening in ICE, as it's a large and complex organization.
> if ICE were abolished overnight, I would throw a party.
If that happened but the fundamental issue of nationalism and lack of concern for human rights was not addressed, I think we could end up in an even worse place than we are currently.
I'm not against abolishing ICE, but I don't think it's a solution in itself. The fundamental issue, in my opinion, is a lack of empathy and understanding for people who seem different, and it's happening on a large scale. I believe that is a much harder issue to tackle compared to restructuring our federal bureaucracy, but that's what we should be focusing on to make a real, lasting impact. Restructuring without addressing the underlying issue seems like a placebo that would do more harm than good.
Sure, the post-9/11 reorganization precedes the current abuses, but I don't see a clear argument that it is somehow fundamental to them. Border Patrol and ICE seem to be the main agencies implementing the problem policies; Border Patrol predates the reports, INS’s enforcement arm would have been in ICE’s role before, but I don't see why that would have made the situation better in an Administration with the same general policy organization.
I'm not raising this point to be pedantic or discount the tragedy. I just think it's important to have an accurate understanding of the organizational structure if one wants to make meaningful changes to it.
see also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_(pamphlet)
etc.