Federal agents and their unions have been accused by immigration rights activists of colluding with organizations that seek to restrict immigration to help sway the national debate of the United States when it comes to immigration reform and undocumented immigrant workers.
The Center for New Community issued a new report yesterday stating that some Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents and union officials have been violating their responsibility to enforce the law on an impartial basis by working too closely with opponents of immigration reform. The report says that their approach thus provides these opponents with a credibility they do not deserve and dangerously assists “its efforts to advocate for policies that malign immigrant communities and obstruct future immigration”.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok says that the idea of the police getting to make policy in a country that is supposed to be a democracy seems like a contradiction in terms, and that the role of the police is to carry out policy rather than being the people to come up with the policy in the first place. The report claims that there have been several instances of unions and agents leaking information to opponents of immigration reform and even making appearances at private functions.
The report has been mocked by CIS director Mark Krikorian, who claims to be proud that agents have leaked information that the public has the right to know. “So we not only don’t apologize, but we are proud of the fact that we are able to get information that ought to be publicly available out into the public,” he declared.