ICE Union Head On Deporting Welfare-Dependents: ‘We Are Not Permitted To Enforce That Statute. Period’

 

 

” The legal prohibition on new immigrants becoming primarily reliant on government assistance for subsistence — or public charges — is never enforced, Chris Crane, an ICE agent and president of the ICE agent’s union told reporters on a conference call Thursday afternoon.

“It is certainly part of what we are supposed to be doing, it is definitely a federal statute within the [Immigration and Nationality Act],” he said when asked about the enforcement of the century-old public charge restriction. “However I will say this: that in my career, I have never seen or heard of the charge being applied in any case to anyone.”

Crane — whose union is in the midst of a lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, ICE Director John Morton, and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas over the administration’s changes to immigration policy — noted that even officers who have been in the agency longer than his ten years have told him they have never seen or heard it employed.”

 

 

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