I’m watching TWiBPrime live right now, and they are currently talking about this, from the New York Times…
The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on Tuesday that the president wanted to “take the shackles off” of agents, an expression the officers themselves used time and again in interviews to describe their newfound freedom.
“Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of the orders,” the unions representing ICE and Border Patrol agents said in a joint statement after President Trump issued the executive orders on immigration late last month.
…
Two officials in Washington said that the shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged pro-Trump political comments and banter that struck the officials as brazen or gung-ho, like remarks about their jobs becoming “fun.” Those who take less of a hard line on unauthorized immigrants feel silenced, the officials said.
Yup. Their job is becoming “fun”… because Agent Orange has rolled back President Obama’s regulations on ICE (basically, he wanted them to only focus on the worst criminal offenders, whereas Agent Orange basically wants them to intimidate and arrest anyone who isn’t white).
This is even grosser because one of President Obama’s nicknames was “Deporter in Chief” for a reason (though there is some nuance to be discussed with this one).
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I think it’s very telling that people accuse Obama of being weak on immigration and week on terrorism. As you mentioned Obama quite possibly deported more immigrants than any president ever, but right-wingers claim he’s weak on the issue to the point of actively working to help undocumented immigrants.
On terrorism Obama’s big legacy is that he was utterly shameless about using drone strikes. The man would sic his drones on anyone in the middle east who even vaguely resembled a terrorist, then later send out another drone to bomb their funeral. Let me repeat that, the man had a fleet of flying remote controlled killbots who would rain hellfire missiles on anyone suspected of being a terrorists, than come around for another pass at their funeral to pick off a few more. That’s like something a cartoon supervillian would do! And yet despite going full Cobra Commander on terrorism he was constantly accused by right-wingers of being weak on the subject to the point of actively working with the terrorists.
Because they never actually cared about how many undocumented immigrants were deported or how many terrorists were killed, they just wanted to use those issues as an excuse to hate on Latinos and Muslims. Despite everything he did Obama refused to ever partake in hateful vitriol about degenerate criminal immigrants or scheming barbaric muslims, so he was ‘weak’ on those issues. Trump could never deport a single undocumented immigrant or kill a single terrorist and they’d still praise him for being ‘strong’ on those issues so long as he spewed bigoted bile at immigrants and muslims.
Check the link I used about “Deporter in Chief”. If the numbers they used are accurate, both Bill Clinton and George Bush deported more people than Barack Obama.
I agree with everything else, however.
The ICE all know they’re gonna be up against the wall when the revolution comes.
As far as they’re concerned the revolution came in November, and they were on the winning side.
The sad part is this could be just the beginning.