Voice of America
By Michael Bowman
June 30, 2015
Immigrant
rights organizations are accusing federal agents and their unions of
colluding with groups that advocate restricting immigration in order to
sway America’s national
debate on undocumented workers and immigration reform.
In
a report issued Tuesday, the Center for New Community alleges some
union officials and agents of the Border Patrol and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement violate their
duty to impartially enforce the law by working hand-in-hand with
immigration opponents.
In
doing so, the report says they “lend an underserved credibility to the
organized anti-immigrant movement and, dangerously, assist its efforts
to advocate for policies
that malign immigrant communities and obstruct future immigration.”
“Should
police be setting policy in a democracy?” asked Mark Potok of the
Southern Poverty Law Center in a teleconference highlighting the
report’s release. “That seems
absolutely antithetical to the basic ideas of democracy. Police carry
out public policy in a democracy, they do not make it. We are not East
Germany, we are not a country run by the Stasi [secret police].”
Leak allegations
The
report alleges multiple instances of federal agents and their unions
leaking information to immigration opponents, and even appearing at
their private events - practices
that “call into question the ability of some to uphold their
responsibility as stewards of the country’s immigration system.”
As
an example, the report points to a recent Twitter posting by the Border
Patrol union thanking two of its agents for providing a “border tour”
to an advocacy group and
“showing the truth on the border.”
The U.S. Border Patrol declined to comment on the report, and the union did not respond to a VOA request for comment.
Others
were eager to speak out, including one of the advocacy groups accused
of collusion, the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which
urges more-restrictive
U.S. immigration policies.
CIS
director Mark Krikorian scoffed at the report’s allegations. Far from
denying contact with law enforcement officers, he defended agents’
actions as a well-intentioned
check on what he sees as the Obama administration’s information
blackout on illegal immigration.
“They
are performing an important function in preventing this
administration’s obsessive secrecy from stopping information getting out
into the public that people need
to know,” said Krikorian.
“The
Nixonian pathology that permeates this administration causes them to
prevent the release of public information. 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 said.
Charges of politicizing issue
As
for taking sides in the immigration debate, Krikorian said it is the
White House that has aligned itself with immigrant rights groups and
attempted to squelch a fact-based
national discussion.
“The
activist groups complaining about this are proxies for the
administration,” he said. “The administration is politicizing
immigration information in a way that is
outrageous, and all the information that we get is public release. This
is information that, in an honest administration, would simply be
posted to the Web.”
In
the conference call, Potok accused CIS and other groups of
thinly-veiled racism and a quest to preserve a mostly-white nation.
Krikorian
said the true extremists are those who push for a dismantling of
immigration laws and want to punish honest Border Patrol officers.
“At
best they are ambivalent about enforcing immigration laws. At worst,
they are hostile to them,” said Krikorian. “And therefore, people who
insist on fulfilling their
oath of office as Border Patrol agents must be exposed and destroyed,
if possible.”
The
finger-pointing comes at a time when immigration reform legislation is
stalled on Capitol Hill and President Barack Obama is attempting to take
matters into his own
hands via executive orders, some of which are being challenged in
court.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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