Time for Biden to Clean House at ICE and Border Patrol
It was revealed this past week that ICE signed an illegitimate agreement with the Trump Administration in its last days that any change in policy under the Biden administration would have to be approved by their ICE Union. Essentially, anything that would reduce deportations would be blocked. If there was ever a bastardization of the idea of the union rights, this is what it is. The reality is that now is the time for Biden to completely clean house when it comes to both ICE and Border Patrol. This should not only be done at the top levels of the organization’s but even further down the chain if need be.
The problem is that the people who choose to go into these agencies, particularly ICE, largely either have xenophobic views or gain them through their time in the agency. We can put up story after story of abuse by ICE agents and the disregard they give to immigrant communities. This is not a few bad apples, it is part of the culture in these organizations. I would highly recommend you watch the film Immigrant Nation on Netflix to see what many of these ICE agents are willing to say on camera. Who knows what they do once that camera is off.
This is the part where Biden needs to get tough and ruffle some feathers if need be. ICE and border patrol are not going to be satisfied just following out new procedures, they will try to go rogue and seek to undermine what the Biden Administration is doing. I don’t know what the process is of actually creating a culture of justice and compassion in these agencies instead of xenophobic nationalism. Perhaps, they need to be disbanded and rebuilt all together. I do not see anything like that happening soon as that would have to go through Congress. However, the by administration does have great power to remove individuals that seemed disloyal to the actual mission of a more just immigration policy. It’s time for a zero-tolerance policy on ICE and Border Patrol agents who still think that they can act like tyrants as they did when Trump, and to a large extent even Obama, was in office.
