Deporting the spouses of US citizens is a net bad.
“An active-duty U.S. Army sergeant who has served in the military for 27 years, including in Afghanistan, said he still does not “understand why” his wife was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week in Texas.
In an interview with CBS News Sunday, Sgt. First Class Jose Serrano, 51, said his wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, was arrested by ICE on April 14 during an appointment at an immigration office in El Paso.
Rivera Ortega, who married Serrano in 2022, has been in the U.S. for over a decade, since 2016. She was granted a legal protection in 2019 that prohibits her deportation to her native El Salvador, U.S. immigration court documents show. But the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that Rivera Ortega entered the U.S. illegally, and Serrano said his wife has been informed she could be deported to a third country, like Mexico, where she has no ties….
If his wife is sent to Mexico, Serrano said he would likely not be able to see her without jeopardizing his military career, given restrictions on service members traveling to Mexico.
“We don’t know nobody in Mexico,” he said. “Plus, as a military, we’re not allowed to go to Mexico.
“Serrano, who was born in Puerto Rico, said his wife’s detention has exacerbated his mental health challenges, noting he has been treated previously for a traumatic brain injury, PTSD and depression.”
ICE whistleblower claims that the massive wave of ICE recruits are not being trained properly, and Homeland Security is lying about the extent of their training.
“A Vietnamese immigrant died in government custody last week, according to a notification sent to lawmakers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, marking the latest detainee death during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Tuan Van Bui, a 55-year-old immigrant, died at the Miami Correctional Center in Indiana.
He is the 46th person to die in federal custody during the current Trump administration.”
“”ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley previously said in a statement to USA TODAY. “TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints – skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”
Early reports from some travelers indicated that ICE’s presence wasn’t doing much to improve conditions – and for some employees it may be more disruptive than helpful.
“The employees that actually work at the airport, they’re afraid of coming to work because they were afraid that their immigration status would cause them to be detained or removed from the airport,” Johnny Jones, secretary and treasurer of the Association of Federal Government Employees local 1040 representing TSA workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said in a March 24 press briefing. “A couple of restaurants did not actually open at the airport because they had no workers show up.”
While Harmon-Marshall doesn’t expect ICE’s presence to pose a risk to aviation security, it could have other adverse impacts. “What I do think their presence is going to do is intimidate the traveling public,” he said.”
Republican and Democratic senators had a deal that would fund all of Homeland Security except ICE, but Trump said no.
Trump is paying a French company one billion dollars to stop a wind farm project and instead invest in oil and gas projects because Trump has an irrational bias against wind energy. He thinks they are ugly.
“After spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a fleet of new vehicles with Donald Trump-inspired paint jobs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents reportedly don’t want to drive them.
Last summer, a slick promotional video captured a Ford Raptor pickup truck and GMC Yukon SUV rolling around Washington, D.C., with music from DaBaby playing over close-up images of navy blue paint jobs with red-and-white racing stripes and a gold seal.
The words “defend the homeland” appear on the side, and “President Donald J. Trump” is printed in gold on a rear window.
Homeland Security’s preview of its new fleet — with paint jobs designed to look like the president’s private jet — cost more than $700,000. The government ultimately spent more than $2 million buying up hundreds of new cars with custom wraps, according to contracts reviewed by The Independent.
But officers don’t want them
…
“ICE has never had marked vehicles,” one person familiar with the purchases told the outlet. “In talking to people, they’re like, ‘We don’t want to use these, we can’t.’”
Another said it’s “ridiculous” to drive marked cars because “you don’t want to advertise what you’re doing.”
“We’re just hiding them in a parking garage somewhere because we don’t want to drive them,” the person reportedly told the outlet. “Who wants to drive the marked vehicles?”
Roughly 25 newly delivered ICE vehicles are sitting at an immigration detention facility in California, unused, according to the Examiner.
ICE has denied any suggestion that its new vehicles aren’t being used.
“Any allegation that these ICE vehicles are not being used is FALSE. ICE is a law enforcement agency, and like all other law enforcement agencies, has a fleet of vehicles that includes those with ICE branding,” a spokesperson wrote”
“an attorney and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instructor, Ryan Schwank, testified before Congress that the agency’s new training program is “deficient, defective, and broken,” leading to constitutional violations and unlawful arrests. “Deficient training,” Schwank added, “can and will get people killed.””