Biden is reportedly considering changing ICE in such a way that would eliminate thousands of officers whose job it is to arrest and deport illegals.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is reported to have introduced a plan to remove ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations branch and then convert those officers into transnational crime investigators.
Biden’s proposal would keep the name ICE but do away with its power to actually enforce immigration laws.
“This is an abolishment of the agency as we know it,” one person with close knowledge of the agenda told reporters.
The number of illegals detained by ICE would greatly decrease as a result, as would the amount of people removed from the country. Arrests by the agency have already dropped greatly over the past ten years. Almost 300,000 people were detained in 2009 compared to only 143,000 in 2019.
Tae Johnson, the current ICE director, has supported Mayorkas’s plan in a private meeting with officials. The same plan was considered in 2018 as liberals pushed to abolish ICE over the agency’s detaining of immigrants in private facilities.
ICE has around 6,000 officers who enforce immigration rules and 7,000 agents who investigate criminal cases. Investigators have higher security clearances than immigration officers, and Mayorkas’s plan could come with a pay increase for immigration officers.