Immigration advocates welcomed President Barack Obama's decision to act independently to shield as many as four million undocumented aliens from deportation, but the executive action could further damage the already-fragile morale among Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
"The president's gradual, calculated dismantling of our immigration system has caused morale to plummet in the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security. Career immigration officials have courageously objected in public, and sometimes resorted to lawsuits to draw attention to the administration's subversion of the law," writes Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
Vaughan says evidence that the administration has not taken the issue of morale among agents seriously can be seen in their plan to "stifle their voices by offering them a pay increase" as part of his new immigration executive order.
Many immigration officers believe the administration's policy will lead to an increase in criminals entering the U.S., some of whom openly harass ICE agents.
“Some have told me that illegal alien criminals they have arrested have even taunted them, saying they know the ICE officers can’t do anything to them because of Obama administration policies,” Vaughan
told The Washington Examiner.
According to a 2013 government-wide survey conducted by
bestplacestowork.org, immigration and customs enforcement ranked at 291 out of 300 agencies.
The impact of administration policy on agency morale has been a concern raised before Obama's latest executive action.
"ICE is crumbling from within. Morale is at an all-time low. As criminal aliens are released to the streets and ICE instead takes disciplinary actions against its own officers for making lawful arrests, it appears clear that federal law enforcement officers are the enemy and not those that break our nation’s laws," Chris Crane, president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council 118, told the
Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013.
Furthermore, Crane added that "for the last four years, President Obama has excluded ICE officers and agents from all input on immigration reforms as well as ICE and [Department of Homeland Security] DHS arrest policies. For that reason, yesterday a letter was sent to the President requesting that ICE agents be invited to future meetings as special interest groups representing illegal aliens have been for the last four years."
Some ICE agents have been so concerned about and frustrated by the administration's immigration policies that they have gone to court to stop them,
according to Fox News.
In August 2012, several ICE agents filed a lawsuit after a June announcement by the White House that the government would use “prosecutorial discretion” in allowing younger illegal aliens to stay in the United States and obtain work permits,
reported National Review.
The lawsuit argued that the Obama administration’s amnesty program commands ICE officers to violate federal law and their oaths to uphold and support federal law and the deferred action directive violates the Administrative Procedure Act and violates the obligation of the executive branch to faithfully execute the law.
The issue of the impact of administration policy on the morale of ICE officers was raised again in 2013 when then-Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced her resignation.
"Any selection — interim or permanent — to replace Secretary Napolitano must disavow these aggressive non-enforcement directives or there is very little hope for successful immigration reform," said Alabama
Sen. Jeff Sessions in a statement after her resignation was made public.
"Whoever replaces Secretary Napolitano must restore the rule of law, as well as the morale of ICE officers which has plummeted under her tenure," he added.
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