ICE Considered One Of The Worst Places To Work In The Federal Government
from the maybe-if-they-spent-time-not-censoring-the-web dept
Last month, we noted the odd propaganda film from ICE director John Morton, in which he seemed to be trying to pat himself on the back and pump up the morale of ICE agents for their hard work in illegally censoring the internet. Perhaps it's because he knew that ICE agents apparently hate working there. An anonymous person pointed us to the news that in a recent ranking of government agencies, ICE ranked very near the bottom -- 222 out of 240 agencies. It seems that morale isn't particularly high there.The same person pointed us to the news of a leaked memo from Morton concerning his disappointment about these rankings, and planning some sort of typical bureaucratic response to bad rankings: appointing someone to lead the effort to improve morale, looking at other agencies with happier employees and hosting some townhall meetings. Perhaps he could also try keeping ICE agents focused on issues related to their actual mandate, rather than having them work on seizing domain names and censoring the internet. Just a thought.
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Filed Under: ice, john morton, morale, working conditions
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I am sure it's only bad to work there because of the internet stuff.
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"I had to take down a desperate illegal immigrant." ICE Agent #1
"I had to take down an armed smuggler." ICE Agent #2
"I had to take down a website." ICE Agent #3
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How nice of Mike to suggest that they should get out of the enforcement business. Perhaps ICE can go on to making infomercials and running them in foreign countries to discourage illegal immigration. That would be good, and would probably increase moral!
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Clearly Agent #3 has the worst job because he's taking down sites no one wants taken down for "secondary infringement" (a civil offense), while his colleagues fight, you know, actual crime.
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Nice way to "duck" the issue.
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Illegal immigrant? Check, that's on the list -- there are rules to follow for entering the country, and it's ICE's job to enforce them.
Smuggler? Check, that's on the list, too -- you can't skip out on customs, either to cut costs or to bring in unwanted items, and it's ICE's job to enforce that, too.
Internet sites? Erm, well... huh. I'm not sure I see where this one fits in. I mean, maybe if they were shutting down sites that provided foreign products to US citizens, like BBC.com or Telegraph.co.uk... 'cause if those were being physically shipped in they'd have to go through customs... But (1) nothing is being physically shipped in, and there's no law requiring customs on the Internet (and until there is such a law, we shouldn't have anyone working to enforce it), and (2) it seems to me that they're just shutting down sites that are (allegedly) involved in providing US products to US citizens. That's weird, because ICE and Customs aren't usually involved when I watch TV or go to the movies or turn on the radio...
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It doesn't matter. It comes from outside of the country, and ends up inside the country. Customs applies.
Try again.
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Go away troll!
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I'm not a Troll.
I'm a level 5 Chaotic Orc Barbarian...for now. Like 10 minutes ago I was a level 1 human tourist, until a newt killed me.
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Focus on morale? Ha!
First, ICE has decided to take a few pages out of the IRS '80s hand book and audit then arrest employers. The issue here is if a company allows illegal immigrants or not. Then you have the number of deportations annually for Congress apportionment money. If they get 400,000 people illegally deported, they get more money from Congress. Then you have the massive number of abuses occurring in the detention centers. And they've raided immigrants for years violating constitutional rights. With the massive abuses, it's any surprise that ICE has let up on certain tools that they've abused. Although, I would suggest that there's political motivations behind the deal.
But I for one am not surprised that ICE is a terrible place to work for. It was formed as a merger between U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It has competing and conflicting objectives which force it to be an agency with dual agendas. And that unfortunately came to a head with the recent February shootout which exposes the problem of how competitive this rivalry has gotten. What concerns me all the more is that the field agents are angry about not being able to catch more immigrants. Even though John Morton is saying there needs to be restraint, the agents seem angry at being railed in. It seems that the agents have a perverse incentive to try to prove their lot in the industry and move up out of being a field agent. In a sense, it's the same as crack dealers living with their mothers. They either don't make enough money or they are in a very dangerous situation where actual thinking is banned.
Now, let's get into the domain seizures...
You have a company with low morale...
--where the leader is ineffective...
--where you've turned into a horrid parody of the IRS...
--where your rival might actually be your supervisor...
--where the entire world hates you for doing your job...
--where civil rights seems to be more an afterthought than a first concern...
Is it any wonder that ICE can't figure out how clueless they are about seizures? How violating rights aren't that big of a deal to them? Is it any wonder that officers move on to places like the MPAA who give them lucrative salaries?
ICE is just trying to kid themselves if they believe that they'll fix their problems any time soon.
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Re: Focus on morale? Ha!
It's taken years to fix that and I'm not sure it's fixed now just better "hidden".
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"Garcia was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department after he and another ICE agent claimed they were roughed up by five officers while doing undercover work. A federal jury found in the police officers' favor in 2005, saying they did not use excessive force against Garcia and the other agent."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/long-beach-shooting-federal-building-ice_n_12836 23.html
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Re: Focus on morale? Ha!
Also I would be much more inclined to accept some illegal immigration if they at least wanted to be Americans.
Most of the ones I see where I live just want the money but their loyalties stay with their home country.
Immigrants that came to America to be Americans made this country great.
Immigrants that come for a free ride and do not want to become Americans can all go fuck themselves.
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Re: Re: Focus on morale? Ha!
When you are arrested and a woman, you have a very high chance of being sexually assaulted. The GAO has only just stepped in to investigate. ICE was intentionally interfering with people reporting these allegations of assault.
Communities are LESS secure from the Secure communities programs. Officials have less help from the Latino community, who have a fear that the police are coming in to arrest them.
People in detention are eating rotten food, leading to less weight gain. Quite frankly, ICE is damn near torturing these people as they wait for a court date. The Secure Communities program is woefully inept at what it's supposed to do.
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Might I point out that the United States constitution does NOT apply to American citizens, so they have no constitutional rights either.
The constitution of the United States applies to the United States Government, and if the constitution says the government shall not do something, then it shall not do that something. The citizenship status of the people involved simply does not apply.
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Re: How do you violate the constitutional rights of non citizens?
The law is supposed to work both ways: it not only imposes obligations, it also grants rights. Right?
It’s not just supposed to be a burden on everybody, it’s supposed to protect them all, right?
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Re: Re: How do you violate the constitutional rights of non citizens?
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the leaked memo link
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Perhaps one of your links should be annotated thusly
Oh...and she's a racist, bigoted, xenophobic asshole. That too.
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Re: Perhaps one of your links should be annotated thusly
If Mike's interested in Morton's email, why not just quote it? Instead, Mike links to a story that basically just gives some rightwing nutjob a chance to rant about his oh-so-lefty bosses. News flash to both Mike and the unnamed-and-unhappy wingnut ICE agent writing into Schlussel - ICE hasn't gotten all soft and squishy since Obama took office. The dysfunction has been there for the past decade.
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In fact, there are eleven entries in that list that fall under the Department of Homeland Security. All but four of the entries are in the bottom half of the list, and even more worrying, all but two of the entries have gotten worse than they were last year.
Sounds like there should probably be a rethinking of this whole Department of Homeland Security.
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FTFY.
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FTFFY.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120221/03323417826/techdirt-deemed-harmful-to-minors-ge rmany.shtml
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idiot.
the abbreviation only has TWO "F"s, not THREE!
(that is not the only thing wrong with your post.)
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3 Fs.
4 if you count the failing grade you got for not getting the idea.
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They know they aren't effective
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And, of course, the ol' saying
"BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES!!!"
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you have 240 different government agencies.
that right there is a significant problem in it's own right.
i'm betting there's a lot of overlap, gaps, and subdividing areas of responsibility that probably shouldn't be.
i mean, yes, obviously you're running a continental empire, that that justifies the agencies being Large and having a lot of branches to cover all the localities. how the heck do you even HAVE 240 government agencies? what do they all DO?
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> that right there is a significant problem
The obvious fix is to merge them into a smaller number of agencies.
After the merge, increase the size of each agency to deal with additional internal communication, conflicting agendas, mandates, etc.
There. Problem fixed. Everyone happy.
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If you find our lost government, please return it, we are trying to make due in the meantime... but you can see how things are going
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Maybe it's because everything ICE is doing eveerything is whack-a-mole
- Deporting only the illegals who have existing criminal records
- Letting a majority of illegal products get smuggled in via the ports & borders because they don't inspect every package
- Shutting down drug tunnel #999, arresting drug smuggler #99999
- Seizing random web sites on the internet simply for linking, but not seizing google.com and and failing to explain the difference.
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Re: Maybe it's because everything ICE is doing eveerything is whack-a-mole
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Maybe it's because everything ICE is doing eveerything whack-a-mole
- Deporting only the illegals who have existing criminal records
- Letting a majority of illegal products get smuggled in via the ports & borders because they don't inspect every package
- Shutting down drug tunnel #999, arresting drug smuggler #99999
- Seizing random web sites on the internet simply for linking, but not seizing google.com and and failing to explain the difference.
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I can say in all honesty...
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You forgot the most important:
- (Threaten to) seize the domain of the US gov for putting out that report.
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/17/justice/california-ice-shooting/index.html?hpt=ju_c2
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