Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin says he’ll pull Customs and Border Protection agents from airports if he thinks they’re needed to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel in the cities those airports serve. Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Mulling elaborated on earlier statements regarding the potential removal of Customs services at airports in so-called “sanctuary cities,” which include the largest airports in the country at New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The earlier comments caused an uproar in the aviation, travel, and tourism industries and prompted joint letters of protest from industry groups imploring him to scrap the idea.
Mullin said he would use the airport personnel to back up ICE agents where local and state law enforcement agencies refused to respond attacks or security threats against the ICE personnel. Federal officials have frequently complained that municipal and state agencies fail to show up when ICE operations are disrupted by protests that sometimes include violence. He said the airport Customs agents are trained to deal with those types of situations and he would use them as a local resource in the absence of help from city and state police services.
One could make a dent in youth unemployment by training these folks the basics of the job and have them work under the supervision of a senior officer who would become involved if questions arise. Facial recognition scanning already filters persons of interest and this hiring should streamline Customs and Border Patrol clearance. Wouldn’t it be awful if this worked and saved money to boot?
ICE has an important mission, but their track record of selecting and training new recruits is less than stellar. As this concept demonstrates, the organization has been suffering from incompetent leadership.
Ah yes, let’s get people scared or outraged over things that haven’t happened and are extremely unlikely to ever happen.
The video below is as important as ever to keep in mind, whenever a hot topic or interview provokes an emotional response: https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc?is=WvWWoE3nger73Ey3
Not going to happen. The consequences would be far-reaching. This is just a lame effort at bullying.
Mullin’s initial statements made it very clear this was completely a political move when he stated specifically “sanctuary cities” were at the head of the list. Now, he’s trying to walk that bad press back and make it become a story of need rather than political desires.
Oh yeah. We gotta do everything we can to get them brown people outta our country. ICE only has $85 billion and 28,000 employees to spend this year..whatever will they do? (BTW, that’s twice the combined budget of the Coast Guard, FBI, Marshall’s Service, and the Bureau of Prisons. It’s more than Canada or England’s entire defense budget. Gimme a break, Markwayne.)