More ICE Implosions
Oct 24th, 2007 | By Michel Marizco | Category: General News, Immigration, Politics
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THE BORDER REPORT
One year. By the time it is all said and done, the new Special Agent in Charge of ICE in Arizona put in almost exactly one year as the top immigration boss in this state. Alonzo Peña, who came to our beleaguered state to quell Gov. Janet Napolitano’s contrived anger over the last SAC’s failure to do anything about illegal immigration in Phoenix, will be stepping down in January.
The announcement was quietly made among ICE offices recently. I expect the agency will make an official announcement in the next few weeks.
This is, I believe, the sixth agency head ICE has placed in Arizona since 2003. We just can’t seem to keep one in place for very long.
The last one, Roberto Medina, became the political target of Napolitano and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, both of whom spent their time complaining that Medina wasn’t responding to illegal immigrants picked up by state and county law enforcement.
The first bureau chief ICE brought in, Tom DeRouchey, ended up killing himself on the way to a press conference in Tucson in 2004. He always seemed the most accessible of the ICE jefes; picking up his cellphone and answering questions frankly.
Still another, ICE resident agent in charge of the Sells office, Robert Gaddison, was arrested on domestic assault charges in summer 2006. He was quietly transferred back to Washington, D.C., after that incident. As far as I know, he remains there today.
Peña was different from Medina, he always carried the reputation of a peacemaker, even when he headed the San Antonio office before coming to Phoenix.
It also helped that he was former U.S. Customs Service, an agency seen as the upper echelons of border enforcement among its own officers.
Still, Peña was unable to staunch the depletion of his ranks. By last June, five high level ICE officials in Nogales and Tucson had stepped down, or rather, over. They all transferred to Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with port inspections and Border Patrol. Then two more jumped ship.
ICE has had tremendous problems since its inception. Sometimes it’s an identity crisis as its leaders resist becoming the deportation arm for Border Patrol. Other times it’s done its job too well; when ICE first began the agency had almost as many foreign bureaus and open terror cases as FBI. You can imagine how that went over.
Nowadays there is a lot of fighting with DEA; I’m still not clear what the fight is.
Peña should have stayed awhile longer. His agents actually liked him and he was bringing back some badly-needed credibility to ICE in Arizona. Now the agency has two months to scramble around and find a replacement. Hopefully, it’ll be an adequate replacement.
Do you remember the movie “The Border” starring Jack Nickelson?
This theme of all immigration and border patrol chiefs, sub-chiefs etc. being on the take is what sticks with me. I firmly believe that it’s a case of “power corrupts” & “absolute power corrupts absolutly”. Factor in that the “Chiefs are “political appointees” in a huge bureaucratic morass & there you have it; ICE Chiefs and sub-Chiefs doing the bidding of the political chief in control instead of what’s best for the American people.
But, really, what is best for the American people? Political pandering aside — forget the close the border/open the border hysterias — what kind of criteria should we use to assess a border that is best for the American public. Currently, this one does wonders to create a notion of “the American people” and the nationalism that comes along with it.
It also creates a ton of political and capital profit, maybe not to you, me, or even the Border Reporter, but to a whole bunch of other people getting handouts and government contracts.
Certainly, the border is a messy, corrupt, violent, and, yes, inhumane place. In that sense, it may also reflect that dark side of us, the American people.
Some of this may be behind the lack of local stability in ICE’s command.
In response to R. Magana: Since before the turn of the 20th century, the Border Patrol has convieniently turned it’s collective heads when American farmers needed “hands” to harvest/plant. Then sounding the alert “We are being overrun by Mexicans”.
You know of the “mass deportations” of the 30’s 40’s & 50’s.
But the seminal moment was that “protest day” when obvious illegals were parading the Mexican Flag and the US Flag turned up side down or under the Mexican flag.
It “woke America up”. The evidence is: Comprehensive Immigration (Amnesty)Bill voted down & yesterday the Dream Act voted down!!
[...] as I told you back in October, it appears the top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement boss in Arizona is set to step down in [...]
Please dear readers, I am asking if anybody has any idea why the Special Agents in Charge of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only last a few months. I am a long time resident of Arizona. In the 1980s, corruption among US border inspectors, US Border Patrol agents, and non-uniformed special agents with ICE, and the old US Customs Service and INS, Investigations unit. In 1980’s the Nogales Port Director for INS killed himself before being arrested for corruption. Most of the Customs internal affairs from Tucson are no running ICE from HQ. The rummor mill suggest that some federal congresspeople from Arizona and Texas may be involved with the the drug cartels from Mexico. The facts the cannot be disputed is the number of federal law enforcement officers “allegedly” committing suicide is increasing since their bodies are discovered inside cars in some remote areas. It is like watching a movie….but unfortunately is not. About the new ICE boss, Matthew Allen…seems like he condones corruption…..I heard of a high ranking ICE male agent twice getting busted while having sex with other males on his office or in public. Yet nothing happened to him. A federal prosecutor in Arizona was caught enjoying some straight sex with a secretary in his office. He got immediately fired? Apparently ICE got something the public is not aware of…thanks!