Tension over Obama policies within Immigration and Customs Enforcement

[pampango]

Source: Washington Post

Under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus away from the worksite raids and sweeps employed during George W. Bush's presidency to deporting more criminals and creating less prisonlike detention settings. But ICE, a branch of DHS, is facing intensified resistance from agency middle managers and attorneys, and the union that represents immigration officers.

The internal conflict has grown increasingly public over ICE's plans, among them to expand a risk assessment tool to guide agents on detention decisions, cut down on transfers of detained immigrants, and open more "civil" detention facilities -- what field directors call "soft" detention. Immigration officers say the new measures limit their enforcement efforts and the revamped lockups will compromise their safety. In June, their union took the unprecedented step of issuing a vote of no confidence in the agency's director, John Morton, and the official overseeing detention reform, Phyllis Coven.

Many of the measures, set to be implemented in the coming weeks and months, may not require a conversation with the union, but ICE leadership seeks the union's viewpoint on issues tied most closely to immigration reform, said Beth Gibson, ICE's assistant deputy director. A senior White House official, acknowledging the rift between ICE leadership and boots-on-the-ground employees, said the union's unusual posture of addressing policy sent a message consistent with groups that espouse tougher immigration restrictions.

"The call from the left is John Morton is too tough. The guy is leading the effort to remove more people from the country than ever before," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. "That others say he's soft on enforcement strikes me as remarkable. At the end of the day, it's about sound law-and-order principles, not decisions based on the political wind."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/26/AR2010082606561.html

[pnorman]

1. "..facing intensified resistance from agency middle managers and attorneys, and the union that ..."

This is the sort of opposition that Obama has to deal with in ALL federal agencies. Carefully installed by Rove/Budh/Cheney as`"stay-behinds", and mainly midlevel, more or less below the public's radar. To demand that Obama take them all head on, isn't too far from saying: "I HOPE HE FAILS!"

[Lightning Count]

3. Doubtful that Bush had anything to do with union leaders. nt

[Jazzgirl]

4. No but he most certainly did have plenty to do with placing

career middle managers in positions where they could sabotage and disrupt. He was really good at that. That has been mentioned several times.

[pnorman]

6. In the past and even more recently, certain unions supported the Republican Party.

For the most part, they were also the most corrupt and despotic ones. This was implicit in Samuel Gompers style of "business unionism", but largely confined to the Building Trades. Until the end of the Twenties, even John L. Lewis was a staunch Republican. A little more recently, knee-jerk "anti-communism" brought some union leaders under the sway of the Republican Party. "Business unionism" made "Nixon Republicans" of a few union leaders. In 1980, one of. the few unions to endorse Reagan was the Air Traffic Union! Until he suddenly "got religion", Jimmy Hoffa jr. was a supporter of Bush43. In Venezuela, the corrupt head of the oilworkers union was part of the coup against Chavez.

Racism & xenophobia has always had a strong appeal to a certain portion of this country, and union members aren't always immune to that!

[Iowa]

5. If middle managers' jobs are threatened, they'll toe the line. n/t

[Demit]

2. "boots on the ground" employees? Insidious language.

The reporter (or his editor, considering this is the WaPo) wants us to see the immigration situation as a military operation, not law enforcement. Just plain old 'employees' would do, thank you.