NEW: The election of Joe Biden has been met with relief among many DHS employees who had been worried that Trump had done long-term damage to the agency’s reputation & feared what would come in a second term.
During his four years in office, Trump redefined the role of the Department of Homeland Security while instituting a series of restrictive measures unlike administrations before him.
Many DHS employees believed the agency had begun acting like an arm of the Trump campaign, as senior officials mimicked political talking points and declared that cities like Portland were “under siege.”
Some employees planned to quit if Trump had won re-election, while others considered their futures and whether they could withstand another four years of frantic changes to the immigration system.
“I hope to see DHS return to its original mission of safeguarding the nation from actual threats to our security, rather than the imagined threats among white nationalists from brown people and other immigrants,” one employee said.
More quotes:
“To me, it means that I can do my work with confidence that I won’t be asked to compromise my morals or ideals,” said one DHS employee.
“Pure unadulterated relief,” said another DHS employee.
“This is vindication that character and truth and facts matter. This means that the department will once again respect the expertise of career officials and take into account facts and what is in the best interest of the country when making policy decisions."
“I am elated. Thousands of civil servants will soon begin the job of putting the immigration system back together. It’s going to be extremely challenging, no question. But likely some of the most meaningful work I will do in my career."
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In multiple instances, guards who were supposed to observe detainees placed in solitary confinement for extra monitoring falsified records to hide apparent dereliction of duty.
In at least two cases — at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and Adelanto Detention Facility in California — people died while they were not being watched but should have been.
Anonymous is the the former DHS chief of staff who was at the agency in key roles during family separation, the remain in Mexico program, the public charge program and so on.
Taylor has addressed the family separation issue but in a limited fashion. I've requested interviews with him on his role on immigration policy during his time in the administration:
“The idea that you could disassociate from a policy that consumed the entire department while you were deputy chief of staff is ridiculous,” the former official said."
NEW: Two controversial border programs were rife with issues, including families forced to remain in custody longer than appropriate, girls stuck in the same detention space w/ unrelated men, & toilets that had limited privacy, per leaked draft IG report.
“We found that CBP held many families together in large open cells in the El Paso [Central Processing Center] with no assurance of privacy or separation of juveniles from unrelated adults,” the report states. In one cell, two 14-year-old girls were held with nine unrelated men.
“Toilet stalls in the living area with waist-high partitions offered little privacy” and there was no “private space for nursing” despite there being mothers with infants.
NEW: ICE confirms a BuzzFeed News report that the agency was implementing a policy that allows officers to quickly deport immigrants who can’t prove they’ve been in the US for a certain period of time.
These deportations generally happen WITHOUT immigration judge oversight.
Immigrants have to use documents to prove the period of time they’ve been in the US.
Attorneys worry that this policy will expose those who can’t prove the length of their stay in the US.
The ICE statement leaves out many details from the agency training materials and the internal memo.
ICE officers have been told they must not apply the quick deportations to people who can prove they were in the US before the policy was first issued last July.
NEW: ICE officials have started to implement a policy that allows officers to arrest and rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for less than two years, according to internal emails and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The shift could allow the Trump administration to increase deportations while circumventing a court system that is severely backed up and short on resources, but advocates for immigrants have said it would destroy their due-process rights.
We got the internal emails and guidance memos on this policy, just issued late last week.
What we found:
ICE officers cannot revisit cases of immigrants who are already in deportation proceedings & cannot quickly deport people who can prove they were in the US before July 23.
Acting DHS Sec. Wolf echoing comments we've heard since 2018 --- that ICE will be forced to do more at-large arrests due to "sanctuary policies" that limit jail cooperation with immigration enforcement. He says that as a result of this collateral arrests will increase.
Wolf highlighting a few of the arrests individuals with more serious criminal records --- unclear the full breakdown of this operation and each individual's past.
Wolf slams sanctuary policies and tells these communities to do their "job" --- notable that local law enforcement has said that these policies help them in their local criminal investigations because of the trust it creates in immigrant communities.