Has ICE Gone Rogue?

By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL, Fri. Geb. 11, 2021: Back in 2018, Zachary Mueller penned a piece for America’s Voice titled: ‘The Many, Many Reasons Why ICE is a Rogue Agency.’ Of course, this was in the height of the Donald Trump administration, so many of course blamed Trump.

Fast track to Jan 28. 2021, eight days into the Joe Biden administration, and it seems that ICE, or the US Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency, has gone completely rogue, defying the Biden administration.

According to the Haitian Bridge Alliance and the UndocuBlack Network, a deportation flight to Jamaica took place on Jan. 28th despite the fact that President Biden had signed an executive order that put a hold on deportations for 100 days.

A second deportation flight to Haiti took place Monday, Feb. 1st, the first day of Black History Month. This as a coalition of migrant rights groups – Freedom for Immigrants, Al Otro Lado and Advocates for Immigrants Rights –presented fresh allegations to the new administration of the US Department of Homeland Security, of describing the torture of Cameroonian asylum seekers in ICE custody.

On Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021, ICE carried out another deportation flight to Haiti even though acting secretary of homeland security, David Pekoske, had stipulated that deportations should be limited to suspected terrorists, convicted felons deemed a “threat to public safety”, and migrants who arrived after November 1, 2020.

The ICE deportation flight of last Tuesday carried no migrant who fit any of those criteria but simply follows a Texas judge’s ruling that has blocked Biden’s executive order, halting all deportations for 100 days.

It’s unlikely the judge’s block will stand, but while that’s worked out in the courts, ICE agents are swiftly still deporting immigrants.

In fact, ICE choose to deport a New York man, who was not born in Haiti and has never even been there, to the French Caribbean nation. Paul Pierrilus, was born in French Saint Martin, but because that country has no birthright citizenship, he never was given citizenship there. His parents brough him to the US as a kid but where he has lived since. That is – until Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. Pierrilus, a 40-year-old financial consultant was forced on to a deportation flight to Haiti by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and left there.

Also deported by ICE agents was a group of over 100 Haitian asylum seekers, who were sent back to Mexico, according to immigration advocates and a memo shared with the Miami Herald.

On Thursday, Feb. 4th, 15 people were deported to Jamaica on Thursday and on Friday, Feb. 5th, 269 people to Guatemala and Honduras.

But it gets worst, officials in Haiti were notified last week to expect 14 flights in the first half of February — some as frequent as twice a day. On Feb. 8th, ICE deported at least 72 people to Haiti, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, as the Biden administration made clear it would press on with expulsions of newly-arrived migrants, pending a review of immigration policy.

That’s far higher than the two monthly flights U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chartered to Haiti back in March at the start of the pandemic, and about as high as during a peak period around last year’s presidential election, the Miami Herald reported.

The deportations have caused many immigrant advocates to panic and question the Biden election promises as memories surfaced of Barack Obama’s increased deportations during his first term.

But a whistle-blower complaint filed on Feb. 1st has said Trump homeland security top dog, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, sought to constrain the Biden administration’s immigration agenda by agreeing to hand policy controls to the pro-Trump union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It also reportedly appears to allow the ICE union to argue that it can reject changes such as Biden’s recent order to focus on violent criminals and not prioritize other undocumented immigrants.

With Caribbean born immigrant, Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, now at the head of the US DHS, new rules are expected this week to ensure ICE focuses on fewer arrests and deportations, and a more restrained agency.

For now, we can only hope that the agency, that has been a rogue too long, gets in line or the Biden administration could be seriously embarrassed and in trouble with its base – much to the glee of Trump loyalists in the agency, whose only goal is to stymie this administration at every turn.

The writer is publisher of NewsAmericasNow