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ICE is at it again – the deportation factory

PoliceIce=InsecurecommunitiesNot enough deportations last year! Deportation quotas unfilled! 

Yes, indeed, you read that correctly.  Like us, you might well think that headline was taken from the satirical newspaper The Onion.  But it is not.  It comes from internal ICE emails disclosed to the ACLU in North Carolina as part of a lawsuit.  We know — Portland is not Atlanta — but that doesn’t give us a lot of hope to think that things have changed.

You can read the emails for yourself here.  We’ve highlighted some of the most troubling parts of it: (1) Using DMV license rolls to find the foreign born, (2) collaborating with the police at traffic stops, (3) creating roadblocks to check all drivers.  What is really offensive (and has been proven to be one of the worst measurements of effective law enforcement) is the body count: ICE is successful when the body count is high.  Could someone (that would be you, Mr. President) tell ICE that they are not playing a video game?

Call us cynical but there has got to be some conflict of interest in this: the author of many of these same emails now works for the private prison corporation that runs ICE’s detention facilities.  Check it out here.