ICE's presence increasing by the day
ICE is all over the news these days. For all the right reasons or the wrong reasons, depending on your particular point of view.
Question is, do you agree that ICE should be detaining/ arresting people who are in this country illegally if they’ve committed no crime and are simply working a job, and they’ve lived here for five years? Two years? One year? Send them all back, no exceptions?
After five years, I think it would be hard for a person to reacclimate back home, what with the drug cartels wanting to recruit your son or prostitute your daughter.
Providing, of course, that you want to draw a line with regard to U.S. residency. If you had the power, how many years would a person have to live here, on welfare or not, for you to give them a Green Card (Lawful Permanent Resident)?
Provided, too, that they’ve committed no serious crime? Class A misdemeanor? Felony? Obviously post-conviction. Or is that not important to you?
For some it is, for others it’s not. ICE is all over the place. In Hidalgo County, they’ve executed arrest warrants against violent offenders. But are they also taking out Molly the Maid?
The recent bust at Taco Olé is a case in point. If some of those arrested haven’t been living here for a good while, I’d be surprised.
Define “good while.”
We all have our own definitions. Some will say as little as “this morning,” although it doesn’t look like anyone is sneaking across these days. Not even this morning. Certainly, no one is crossing the river, going up to a Border Patrol agent, asking for asylum like they were doing en masse before Jan. 20, 2025.
Many were using Biden’s CBP One App, which allowed asylum seekers to schedule an appointment to enter the U.S., then get temporary parole authority to stay here, and then be given a notice to appear at an immigration court, often years away. It’s estimated that approximately 2.5 million entered the U.S. under that system.
How many exactly entered the U.S. isn’t really known. We hear the “14 million” number thrown about, but part of that is based on supposition. The only thing Border Patrol knows is that it had approximately 10 million “border encounters” nationwide during Biden’s four years, which is defined as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountering non-citizens attempting to enter the country, either at or between ports of entry.
Approximately eight of the 10 million were along the southwest border (Texas to California).
How many people simply bypassed CBP and got into the U.S. illegally, the “got-aways,” who knows.
Now Trump’s immigration agenda includes removing all of them, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that he had that power.
For anyone who came in after Biden elevated the CBP One app after he took office, Jan. 20, 2020, which had been used mainly for scheduling truck inspections, and turned it into an app for wouldbe immigrants, through Jan. 20, 2024, their legal right to be here is no longer valid.
No longer do they have the right to work. This needs fact checking with some other source, since things change so rapidly, but I think that’s the case.
Business owners now employing them, and I hate to use the word “them,” but you get the point, will carry potential liabilities if such immigrants — once temporary legal, now they’re not — are on the payroll.
Many are self-deporting, which is already proving a problem for the ag industry.
The Masks
In a related topic, the anti-ICE movement is upset that ICE agents are wearing masks.
“Take off your $#&$*#)_$*$&% masks,” they shout at the really violent anti-ICE rallies (mainly in California).
Think about it, though, if you were them, an ICE agent, or any federal agent, would you want your face exposed?
Because if it is, exposed, you’ll most likely be doxed (personal ID posted online) by the anti-ICE people with IT skills. Your face will go online along with your personal home address.
Even if an agent is single, much less with a family, no one wants to lose that sense of privacy. The times are too violent.
Also, no one knows which of these agents agrees with what’s being done now to undocumented immigrants, or disagrees.
They’re not all ICE agents. Almost all of the federal law enforcement agencies (FBI, ATF, IRS,) have been recruited to help deport people.
One day, some of these guys, women, were working a white-collar fraud investigation, and now they’re out helping take down the undocumented. What a switch.
If you love Trump, you love ICE. And vice versa. Hate one, you hate the other.
So, with access to facial recognition, the anti-ICE IT guy has your name and your home address where your spouse and baby are now waiting for you to come home.
People say, if I were an ICE agent now, I’d resign instead of picking up people like they’re doing.
Maybe, maybe not. In today’s job market? Which sucks?
Giving up a full-time federal job is no easy task, even if it is based on principles because principles won’t put food on the table.
If no one would mess with the agents; personal info, post it online, they wouldn’t all be wearing masks.
Pretty simple logic.
Hard times for everybody.