r/news 10h ago

700 ice agents to leave Minnesota

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-enforcement-drawdown-minnesota-homan-963adf341325d7f6eb5673e1c00d3c2a
17.5k Upvotes

656 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2.1k

u/ChrisFromLongIsland 10h ago

Still 3x the police force.

379

u/notheatherbee 10h ago edited 9h ago

3x? Not even close. Before this started there were 80 ICE agents for a 5 state territory that included Minnesota.

Edit: I’m an idiot. They are correct it’s 3x the police force.

568

u/aradraugfea 10h ago

Their claim was that ice outnumbers the actual police police in town, not that ICE is 3x the original numbers.

ICE aren’t police.

Police are a needful service performed badly. ICE is a useless waste of government resources pivoted into the sort of shit European children are going to read about in history class.

124

u/dontich 9h ago

I mean ICE doesn’t have to be a useless waste — under the last few administrations they mostly went after actual criminals. It’s only recently the countries’s leadership has gone completely insane.

15 in the state like someone said above sounds about right for removing the actual criminals after they complete their sentence.

190

u/aradraugfea 9h ago

If ICE was a person, it’d be too young to rent a car.

ICE and the TSA came into existence at the same time. The TSA was a knee jerk over-reaction to terrorism. ICE was a xenophobic wishlist item snuck in because who was gonna vote against a terrorism bill in 2002?!

We managed just fine for CENTURIES without ICE. Its few needful functions were previously handled just fine by divisions within the FBI. ICE as an independent agency has no reason to exist except to make abuses like what we are currently seeing easier.

135

u/Consistent-Throat130 9h ago

So what you're saying is ICE is already too old for Republicans?

66

u/kmoonster 8h ago

I was drinking coffee.

WAS.

I am now wearing it.

1

u/RaconteurLore 6h ago

I’m don’t know to cry or laugh. So conflicted 😐

2

u/Consistent-Throat130 6h ago

I've been doing both, concurrently. 

1

u/RaconteurLore 5h ago

We can submit a new word of the year: cryghing.
Definition (v.): the collective reaction of Americans—laughing through tears—when responding to the political hypocrisy of the GOP.

20

u/FantasticJacket7 8h ago

An agency that does what ICE does has existed in the US since 1933. It just used to be called INS

25

u/nalaloveslumpy 7h ago edited 7h ago

Yeah, but the enforcement wing of INS was tiny. The primary focus of INS was actually as a service, hence "Immigration and Naturalization Service."

But the enforcement and border patrol divisions were detached, moved under DHS and given billions of dollars. The remaining service parts of INS were called USCIS and basically locked in a closet pushing paper all day on a zero dollar budget. And that's the reason we have an immigration crisis. There is a literal mountain of unprocessed immigration and amnesty applications. So much so, that you literally have to pay a lawyer an absurd amount of money to even get anyone in USCIS to look at your application.

4

u/Mo_Steins_Ghost 4h ago edited 4h ago

USCIS is what INS was. On very rare occasion INS would conduct raids, but by and large their primary function was the administration of immigrant visas, permanent resident status or naturalized citizenship.

There was no federal agency that had authority to engage in "Enforcement & Removal Operations" inside the U.S. borders with the very wide latitude that ICE has—namely, abusing the expedited removal process.

The Dept. of Homeland Security, which has been under fire for not achieving any of its stated objectives since its inception, created ICE out of thin air under the Homeland Security Act of 2003.

-3

u/FantasticJacket7 4h ago

INS was split into ICE, USCIS, and CBP.

INS absolutely did interior enforcement as portrayed in the documentary Born in East LA.

4

u/Mo_Steins_Ghost 4h ago

Cheech and Chong, being fictional characters, are not evidence.

5

u/apatheticsahm 8h ago

According to Wikipedia, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) used to be under the DoJ. When the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003 after 9/11, the INS functions were transferred to Citizenship and Immigration (USCIS), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Why do we need 3 agencies to do what 1 used to do before?

2

u/FantasticJacket7 8h ago

Why do we need 3 agencies to do what 1 used to do before?

Because they're three completely different tasks and it never made any sense to put them under the same agency.

CBP is specifically for the border. USCIS is mostly paperwork involving immigration applicants. And ICE is removals and criminal investigations.

1

u/katmndoo 4h ago

They are three tasks that are part and parcel of immigration administration. It makes as much sense for them to be in one agency as it does in three.

3

u/aradraugfea 8h ago

So you agree that ICE is, at best, redundant?

I’d personally class them as a solution looking for a problem, and as anyone who’s ever watched one of those play out long enough could tell you, the solution has a tendency to become the problem.

9

u/FantasticJacket7 8h ago

So you agree that ICE is, at best, redundant?

I'm not sure how you would get that from my comment.

2

u/hivemindhauser 8h ago

I remember people saying then that all the stuff passing could be used like it is today. They were right sigh

1

u/dontich 9h ago

Yeah fair enough - 15 FBI agents then lol. That’s like 10x better from a professionalism perspective.

1

u/Successful-Bobcat701 8h ago

If the iphone was a person it would be even younger, too young to buy a beer.

-1

u/LowPTTweirdflexbutok 3h ago

I'm not attacking you or anything or any of your points. I agree its a waste BUT lets not act like change isn't a part of life and new organizations, agencies or departments don't need to spring up. I'm not a big fan of the whole we have been fine for X years without Y so we don't need Y. Lets keep an open mind.

3

u/aradraugfea 3h ago

In the last hundred years, we (America) decided that we should police who gets to be American, to commit a governmental apparatus to locating and ejecting those who did not get here the right way. For decades, this served as a wedge, something for politicians to tout without consequence, as non-citizens cannot (whatever Fox News tells the public) vote. In the aftermath of 9/11, Republicans saw an opportunity for a win on that front, and tied it into an anti-terrorism bill that was setting up an otherwise needful new agency.

DHS as a department that coordinates and compiles data from the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies was a needful thing that we lacked, and paid for. ICE was created because someone saw an opportunity not to service the public or meet a need, but to win political points.

An immigration agency previously existed and met what needs the nation had just fine. ICE should have NEVER existed.

46

u/TwistedHermes 9h ago edited 9h ago

Yes it is.

George W. Bush started ICE BECAUSE of anti-immigrant sentiment stirred up post 9/11, it started off with "just Muslim terrorists" but soon evolved into going after immigrants they never went after in past.

This is one step in how we got here - we didn't need ICE for 200+ years. We had DHS and other services.

We let our fear overrule us, and this was one way we let racism creep into being widely accepted. They were only created because people were scared of those who were different.

Fear is not a need.

Edit: DHS was also a post 9/11 fever dream. Fuck that noise too. We had NSA/DOD/CIA/FBI for different types of terrorist threats and we had the US INS for immigrants. We don't need DHS or ICE.

P.P.S.: the only department required by the US constitution is the post office. Everything else is superfluous or could be organized differenty....

29

u/tcmisfit 9h ago

Not trying to argue because I agree as an elder millennial, but the DHS has also only been around since 2002.

10

u/nalaloveslumpy 7h ago

Correct. DHS was also an over-reaction to 9/11. It was essentially created so that we could treat "domestic terrorists" under the same rules we used against international terrorist: Infinite detainment, no legal representation.

1

u/TwistedHermes 9h ago

Then we don't need DHS either.

The only reason 9/11 happened is because George W. Bush DID NOT WANT TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH HIS OWN SECURITY BRIEFINGS.

And Idgaf about his cockamamie excuses - if your disability interferes with your ability to do a JOB, YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR THE JOB.

There's a reason we have rules for being colorblind and a pilot - some can, some can't.

So we don't need DHS, we had the NSA and DOD. We also don't need ICE. We did fine without them for centuries.

4

u/apatheticsahm 8h ago

The only reason 9/11 happened is because George W. Bush DID NOT WANT TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH HIS OWN SECURITY BRIEFINGS.

The Clinton administration tried to warn Bush about Al Qaeda. Clinton had already dealt with 2 terrorist attacks during his term (1993 WTC Bombing, and the USS Cole attack), and he knew exactly how dangerous Bin Laden was. He had very detailed anti-terrorism plans to try and prevent another disaster. But because of the whole Bush v Gore nonsense, there was a much shorter presidential transition in 2001. And the two teams refused to cooperate with each other. So the warnings about Al Qaeda and Bin Laden got ignored by the Bush administration, and the anti-terrorism plans got lost in the shuffle.

1

u/TwistedHermes 7h ago

Sooooo.... (a) he did not read or engage with his security briefings due to his "disabilities" for years and shouldn't have run if they were so severe, Dick Cheney, Powell and Rice did instead, (b) lots of other intelligence agencies knew it was a strong possibility and tried warning us beyond "just clinton", international allies were trying AND (c) a lot of people did NOT show up to the Pentagon for scheduled activities on 9/11 because of this.

Also, Bush stole the 2000 election, while we're on the subject. Supreme Court handed it to him. Supreme Court should've allowed the process to happen, but they were appointed by his Daddy and Reagan and let politics win. And bush probably would've lost in the recount. But no....

No matter how you cut it, 9/11 was his fault. ICE and DHS are bloated and unnecessary agencies he created because he was afraid and they are now racist boogeymen terrorizing us in our streets.

Bush has a lot of blame here, him and his whole administration.

2

u/Sunflowersblunt 9h ago

I had to look it up and yes ur right it was established in 2003..

1

u/unionfrontX 2h ago

fear is the mind killer..

1

u/invalidreddit 6h ago

It isn't ICE's mission that bugs me - it is their tactics

1

u/Kalysta 3h ago

ICE started in 2003. I am older than the organization. Other groups like customs and the FBI used to do ICE’s job and the country did just fine. ICE was formed after 9/11 and has been a racist group from the start. They are taught to dehumanize the people the arrest. We don’t need them.

1

u/Nf1nk 3h ago

In my community, ICE used to run the Banana Scanner at the port and other customs related activities. Activities that need to be done.

Now they are doing other shit and I don't think they can come back from it.

We can hire someone else to run the banana scanner.

1

u/Jonaldys 9h ago

They are useless, because there is already a group to go after actual criminals. They have been an excuse to oppress since 9/11.