So what is ICE up to these days?

This post is sort of a sequel to this one, and we really cannot, in good conscience, stop writing about it.

The Architect.

To start out, we need to talk about the person who set the tone for the abusive policy attitude toward all immigrants in the United States.  Not just from Mexico.  Not just from Honduras or Syria or Haiti.  Dreamers, refugees, children, disabled.  It is all the same to him.

That person is current Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly.  It would be hard to find a more repulsive,
racist man-- it is true, but the the important point is that he's Trump's boy, and like attracts like.

Examples of reporting on this topic are everywhere.  Here are a few.

John Kelly, Deacon of Deportation by Charles M. Blow

Jan. 17, 2018 People correctly direct their ire about Donald Trump’s hostile, racist, anti-immigrant policies at Trump himself because, after all, this starts at the top.

But there is someone else in the administration, behind the scenes and in the shadows, who deserves more scrutiny and more condemnation for this administration’s approach to immigration: Chief of Staff John Kelly....read full article

John Kelly’s Promotion Is a Disaster for Immigrants
In just six months, Kelly turned DHS into a deportation machine.

A quote from the article:

"On paper (if not always in practice), the Obama administration directed immigration agents to focus their energy on those who’d been convicted of serious crimes and to largely leave alone those who’d been convicted of no crimes. In February, Kelly wrote: “Unless otherwise directed, Department personnel may initiate enforcement actions against removable aliens encountered during the performance of their official duties.” Translation: Every undocumented and deportable immigrant would now be fair game."

As we've seen, ICE has taken this directive and put it into action with sickening zeal.

Has there been a slowing of the deportation machine? Has there been a return to "tiering" (kick out "the bad ones" first) ? Not at all. If anything, things are worse.

Perhaps we really only needed one John Kelly quote.  Talking to Laura Ingraham, he cut to the chase:

"But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War. And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand."

The Bullshit.

Look no further than the @ice.gov Twitter account. If you cast a net that drags in mostly peaceful, non-criminal immigrants you'll catch some bad guys, too. Law of averages. They love to crow about those.  MS-13, rapists, human traffickers, etc.

Joint Operation nets 24 transnational gang members, 475 total arrests under Operation Matador

We're not saying it's wrong to bring these people to justice.  We're saying they're damaging the fabric of our country by tearing families apart and persecuting innocent people.

The Reality.

All we could stomach for now, in no particular order, since Trump and his cronies got their hands on

the levers of power.  Some of these have been favorably resolved, but only because the spotlight tweaks their sense of how their jackboot tactics might possibly appear to decent people.

More than 500 pregnant women in ICE detention, after reversal of Obama policy

Immigration authorities have detained 506 pregnant women since December, when the Trump administration ended a policy to release most pregnant women while their immigration cases are pending...read full article

Video of woman being pulled away from her daughters in immigration arrest sparks anger

They said Ms. Morales was running a human smuggling ring.  Funny, she's one they released instead of prosecuting. Such a heinous crime, too.  Maybe ICE is soft on crime, or they lied again.  But it's OK to lie.  That's what they told Douglas Schwab.

Police answered immigrant's call for help, then gave him to ICE

Wilson Rodriguez Macarreno and his family heard an intruder so he called police for help. About an hour later, he was in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Rodriguez's detention Thursday sent shock waves through the Seattle suburb of Tukwila and is now garnering national attention from immigration advocates, warning that the way authorities handled the case could make immigrants scared to call police to report crimes...read full article

Mother and son's deportation pits senator against Homeland Security

US Sen. Bob Casey is lashing out at the Trump administration for deporting a Honduran mother and son who he says are at risk of getting killed by gang members

John Kelly's comment at the time...

"You can't pick and choose the laws that you obey.  And I can't pick and choose the laws that we're by law required to enforce.  We had a court order to remove her and we did."

This guy is scary.  Trump called him spectacular...read full article

Wife of 7th Special Forces Group vet faces deportation under tighter immigration rules

A Virginia immigration court on Monday could decide to deport the wife of an Army 7th Special Forces Group veteran, despite provisions in the law that allow her to remain in the United States.

Retired Sgt. 1st Class Bob Crawford, 52, and Elia, 44, married in 2001 when he was still on active duty and deploying regularly with 7th Group to conduct counter-narcotics operations and training missions in Latin America...read full article

Deported, divided: How a mom’s return to El Salvador tore her family in two

More than two months had passed since he’d last seen his mother, through a glass barrier in an immigration detention center in Williamsburg, Va. The U.S. government deported Liliana Cruz Mendez to El Salvador before her son, Steve Bermudez, finished fourth grade...read full article

Immigrant arrested by ICE after dropping daughter off at school, sending shockwaves through neighborhood

Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez had just dropped off his 12-year-old daughter Tuesday morning at her Lincoln Heights school when two black, unmarked vehicles surrounded his car.

As he pulled away from the school and got back onto the main road, the vehicles’ lights flashed. Avelica-Gonzalez, with his wife and 13-year-old daughter in the car, pulled over. Agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wearing jackets that said “POLICE” on the back, detained the 48-year-old father of four...read full article

Follow up to the above:

How one L.A. father’s arrest put an entire neighborhood on edge

The air-conditioning system pumped cold air even during frigid winter nights on the high desert. To fall asleep under his thin blanket, Romulo Avelica Gonzalez, then 48, wore two pairs of socks, wrapped his feet in bath towels and tried to bring his mind to a warmer place...read full article


Often, reporting on immigration will refer to "Obama-era" policies, but this is not really accurate.  The policies, for the most part, are "Bush-era", "Clinton-era", and "Reagan-era".

Past administrations, both Republican and Democrat, understood the difference between campaign-trail rhetoric and policy in the real world.  They understood immigration policy is complicated because they weren't in the business of harassing and sowing fear among law-abiding immigrants, and more importantly, their vulnerable family members, whether documented or not.