RadioFreeLiberal.com

yea it was a Bush/Cheney post 911 production from 2003 and is used in places like Detroit to do raids on non immigration matters.

The ICE/CBP thing came from the USA PATRIOT act, which as we know was rammed through without debate after 9/11. I believe the original act was written by a bipartisan committee before 9/11, but I could be wrong. In any event, it was something like 1000 pages long, and hardly anyone read it before voting for it. Passing complete re-organizations of the Executive Branch without reading them is seldom a good idea, to say the least. What we have is a classic Reichstag Fire.

Certain sub-agencies in ICE were indeed a Gestapo waiting for the right fascist to become president and turn them loose. They have a very wide authorization. The name stands for Immigration AND Customs Enforcement. That used to be three agencies. There's also little accountability. Their culture encourages cowboys and Indians, almost literally. It was scary enough under Obama, then this bunch made it into just short of a legal lynching.

There's nothing wrong with the CBP/ICE thing that a full re-organization and more daylight wouldn't help, but that's not coming, so right now the cowboys are the law.

......Kellom is just one of the 489 people killed in 2015 in the United States by law enforcement officers. There is, however, a disturbing twist to Kellom’s case. He was not, in fact, killed by the police but by a federal agent working with a little known multi-jurisdictional interagency task force coordinated by the U.S. Marshals.

Similar task forces are deployed across the country and they all share the same sordid history: the Marshals have been hunting people ever since the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act compelled the agency to capture slaves fleeing north for freedom. One nineteenth-century newspaper account, celebrating the use of bloodhounds in such hunts, wrote: “The Cuban dog would frequently pull down his game and tear the runaway to pieces before the officers could come up.”

These days, Detroit’s task force has grown particularly active as budget cuts have decimated the local police department. Made up of federal Immigration and Customs officers, police from half a dozen local departments, and even employees of the Social Security Administration office, the Detroit Fugitive Apprehension Team has nabbed more than 15,000 people. Arrest rates have soared since 2012, the same year the local police budget was chopped by 20 percent. Even beyond the task force, the number of federal agents patrolling the city has risen as well. The Border Patrol, for example, has increased its presence in the region by tenfold over the last decade and just two weeks ago announced the launch of a new $14 million Detroit station.

Kevin Kellom approaches the barricade of microphones and begins speaking so quietly that the gathered newscasters crush into each other in an effort to catch what’s he’s saying. “They assassinated my son,” he whispers. “I want justice and I’m going to get justice.”

Yet today, six weeks after Terrance’s death, no charges have been brought against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fired the fatal shot........

Ice are police.

It's a dead end and counter productive for Democrats to try to make an issue of getting rid of ICE. Get power back and out of Trumps hands, then do something about ICE.

But go at that using other issues. Democrats trying to get rid of ICE is one issue they can turn to their advantage over us and play the old law and order party theme. They can attack law and order, we can't.

There are more issues than there are hours in a day anyway. Choose the most productive and focus on them.

Meaning those who are screaming we need to get rid of ICE are just making political points. While those screaming if we get rid of ICE it will weaken homeland security are doing so just to make political points

Well, it doesn't seem like the #AbolishICE movement is winning over the public - even Democrats. (The number who support abolition is higher than oppose, but is not above 50 percent. Likewise with young people.)

Dare I suggest - either we reframe the movement, or better explain the goals? The thing about hashtags - well, sometimes you don't get context. Hashtag politics I know appeal to people who want slogans and soundbites ... but this issue is complex and might require ... more words.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/ ... oll-708703

Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided.

But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE. Majorities of Republicans (79 percent) and independents (54 percent) want the government to keep ICE.

[snip]

While the partisan differences on the issue are stark, so are the cleavages by age. Among voters under age 30, more support getting rid of ICE (39 percent) than keeping it (33 percent). But majorities among all other ages — 30-44 (51 percent), 45-54 (56 percent), 55-64 (61 percent) and 65 and older (68 percent) — support keeping the agency.

Asked whether they would be more or less likely to vote for a congressional candidate if they supported getting rid of ICE, 40 percent say it would make them less likely. Another 26 percent of voters say it would make them more likely to vote for the candidate. A third of voters said it would not make a difference either way or didn’t have an opinion.

Among Democrats, 40 percent say it would make them much more or somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate if he or she favored abolishing ICE — roughly twice as many as the 21 percent who said it would make them less likely to vote for that candidate.

[snip]

“[C]ongressional candidates who embrace the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement could have a difficult time appealing to voters across party lines,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s managing director. “For example, over three-fifths (61 percent) of Republicans and 41 percent of independents say they would be less likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported getting rid of ICE.”

[snip][end]

Dunno, I've got an idea, but mine doesn't fit on a hashtag, or that you can pose with easily with everybody holding a single letter on a sign.

Here's my slogan.

"American people: ICE has recently been committing a load of improper extra-judicial activities that are violating human rights and tearing people apart. We need to change the nature of this organization and the rules of engagement and procedures it follows. Let's have a conversation on how to do that, whether it means breaking up the agency, relocating the agency, reforming the agency ... but we need to change the way it and its agents have been behaving."

Oh, I know Prof. It won't fit in a hashtag. Still, if I was running for November, I sure as heck would run on that.

You said you liked Kamala Harris' ideas about ICE reform, Sam.

[from the interwebz of MSNBC]
“I think there's no question that we've got to critically reexamine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing,” Harris told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt. “And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”

Dunno, as I often say, people get hung up on methods vs. goals. The goal is to stop ICE's abuses. It could be done by abolition, and starting from scratch, although possibly also through reform, relocation, and restructuring of the agency.

I agree with you Kamala is suggesting the right approach. Critical re-examination. I personally don't see anything wrong not only for calling for it, but even also for running on it for November.

I'd be clear with dealing with the misinformation. Reforming ICE doesn't mean we want those nonsensically described "open borders" (never had them, never will), nor that, BTW, do we not want an agency that goes after people who are actual threats to society (rather than bogus ones).

I kinda think there are times where lots of things in government could be critically re-examined. Of course, as a liberal, my goal is to make them function more humanely, fairly, and justly, whereas I think conservatives, as with agencies like the CFPB, really basically have the goal of weakening them or making them go away. In that latter case, that seems to be what Trump and his toadies are trying to do.

At least 19 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators are seeking to dissolve the agency, concerned that the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal migrants has limited their ability to pursue national security threats, child pornography and transnational crime.

In a letter sent last week to Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, the special agents proposed creating a stand-alone investigations unit and another agency to handle immigration detention and deportation. The request was sent as a growing number of Democrats and immigration-rights advocates have called for eliminating ICE.

Investigations “have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens, instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross border crimes impacting our communities and national security,” wrote the agents from Homeland Security Investigations, which is a branch of ICE. The Texas Observer first reported the letter..............

Fuck these "agents." They feel that trump's crackdown on down on illegal
l migrants has limited their ability to pursue national security threats, child pornography and transnational crime.

This isn't a crackdown on illegal migrants. This is a crackdown on all migrants. I, for one, will not pay any attention to any of these assholes who persue their job with mindless good little nazi obedience, until they get honest about what is really going on at the border.

Families with legitimate paper are being ripped apart. Families with legitimate requests for asylum are being ripped apart.

Fuck these agents and the horses they rode in on.

well what do you expect to happen when combining these type things together?