This diary is in response to a diary in Community Spotlight by Thelonious08 entitled The Argument for Abolishing ICE. In the interest of full disclosure, I am retired from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and, prior to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the U.S. Customs Service. My federal service was from 1989 to 2015, with eight years prior military. During this entire period, I worked closely with Customs investigating agents, who upon creation of ICE became ICE agents under HSI, Homeland Security Investigations. A number of ICE-HSI agents were students of mine in the classes I taught.
Truth to tell, almost all of us Customs employees were sad to see our agency abolished. During the lead up to the Congressional vote, we hoped we would not be placed in Homeland Security. The U.S. Customs Service was created in 1789 as the very first legislation of the First Congress. The Articles of Confederation did not provide authority to the weak national government to raise revenue. The thirteen states usually failed to make the contributions that Congress asked them to make, and as a result the weak national government had no money. The Army was not paid, and on two occasions military coups were threatened. So the very first Act of the very first Congress was to establish Customs duties to raise revenue, and to create the Customs Service to collect the Customs duties. Several months later, Congress got around to creating the Department of the Treasury, and made the Customs Service part of Treasury. From September of 1789 to March 2003, the Customs Service was part of the Department of Treasury, and I for one and many others were sad to see us leave Treasury.
At the outset of this diary, I linked to Thelonious08’s diary and you can read his diary for a history of the INS.
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was one of George W. Bush’s responses to 9-11, slightly less devastating than his other response of invading Iraq. The theory seems to have been to consolidate the functions of INS and Customs from two agencies into — well — two agencies. All Customs employees except for the criminal investigators were moved into CBP. INS officers who processed arrivals at airports and border crossings were also moved into CBP. The Border Patrol was moved from INS to CBP. Also, some Department of Agriculture employees who examined food and other agricultural products at border crossings, seaports, and airports, were transferred to CBP.
All Customs criminal investigators were transferred to HSI: Homeland Security Investigations, within ICE. This created difficulties in prosecuting civil and criminal penalties for violations of Customs laws (my area). Name me one police department in the country where the Chief of Criminal Investigations is his own Commissioner, equal to the Police Commissioner, with full authority to refuse to conduct investigations requested by the Police Commissioner.
But, and I can’t emphasize this enough, HSI investigators are not the ICE agents rounding up immigrants, breaking up families, and running concentration camps. They are professional criminal investigators. They investigate and obtain search and arrest warrants and work with ICE, CBP, and U.S. Attorneys to prosecute criminals. Criminals who file fraudulent invoices with CBP to cheat the government out of lawful Customs duties (my area); criminals who bring into the country narcotics, counterfeit goods, and dangerous toys and other dangerous consumer products that don’t meet safety standards; criminals engaged in money laundering and human trafficking; criminals who are members of international crime cartels; criminals who knowingly import products made with child or convict or slave labor.
Then there is that second sub-agency within ICE — ERO: Enforcement and Removal Operations, formerly with INS. These are the ICE agents you see on TV and read about on the internet. They are the ones rounding up immigrants, leaving their little boys who are born here and thus are U.S. citizens crying alone on the city sidewalk. My former boss Jeh Johnson stated that when Obama was President and he was Secretary of DHS, they made sure that ERO operated within the some bounds of human decency. They arrested and sent into the deportation process those undocumented immigrants who committed real crimes (not crossing the border), and brand new arrivals near the border, and generally left the others alone.
Regardless of what agency you put these people in, Trump is going to order these men and women to keep doing what they have been doing, because that is what the bigoted Trump and his bigoted cult followers want. Abolishing ICE — and what do you do with HSI??? — will not change the awful and inhumane crimes of this regime. Only a change in our federal government will, starting with a Democratic Congress elected this November. So vote!