Editorial: ICE “La Migra” Embarrasses Itself
Their purpose was to embarrass police departments and cities refusing to comply with the wishes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) Instead, they ended up demonstrating the federal agency’s incompetence and lack of credibility.
Trump Administration’s plan to deport undocumented people included having ICE publish a weekly list of the municipalities allegedly failing to collaborate with the agency – Places whose attitude jeopardizes public safety, according to the White House.
The list was also supposed to detail the cases in which a specific police department failed to comply with a detainer issued by ICE to retain an individual two days longer than required. The purpose was to give ICE time to determine if they would detain an undocumented person accused of a crime or who had served a jail sentence.
After three reports plagued with errors, ICE temporarily suspended the publication to “analyze and refine its methodologies.”
Of course, some ICE representatives have downplayed the problems found in the first report saying that the priority was to embarrass those refusing to collaborate with the agency.
However, it was ICE who was made a fool of itself.
The reports confused city names, spoke about incidents that never took place and mistook the jurisdictions where detainees were held. Corrections and apologies had to follow the reports.
Further confusion emerged due to ICE’s excesses. The reports meant to pressure city authorities by exaggerating their lack of collaboration, but some of the municipalities on the list of alleged sanctuary cities actually allowed ICE to access their facilities, interview undocumented people, and even notified the agency when detainees would be released so they could detain them. Still, that was not enough for ICE.
There is no formal definition about what a sanctuary city is. It is known that the courts consider it unconstitutional for the police to retain a detainee longer than required without a court order. That is what cities object to.
The Department of Justice is not interested whether something is constitutional or not when it comes to immigration. It does not pay attention either to the absurdity of a presidential order asking for such lists to be prepared, or does it care about the fact that its policies cause more danger by driving immigrants fearing deportation to refrain from reporting crimes, as has been seen in Houston and Los Angeles.
What it does seem to respond to is to having committed a blunder that lays bare the inadequacy of Trump’s immigration policy.
