When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
This reminds me of a maxim about doing large projects: "Three things everyone wants - fast, cheap, and good. But you can really only have any two of them."
The tRump admin has broken this rule and has chosen "fast" twice.
David Brooks is too much of a coward to actually look at the evidence and try to render any judgment. Doing that would destroy his ability to find the right angle to flatten any difference and equivocate.
Meanwhile, since we were discussing who these people in masks are, and what motivates them...
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.
According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”
The other gem in this piece:
When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
I never really understood why the National Review was able to recover from being unapologetically racist
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/
but you can see that deep down, they never really changed.
I am reminded of an acquaintance who was in Chicago in 1968, and his advice for protesters.
If you have to drive to the site, leave your car well away from the action because any moving car is threatening.
Don't carry a sign on a stick, because sticks are threatening.
If people around you start throwing baggies full of sh*t at the law enforcement personnel, leave. Immediately. Because baggies full of sh*t are threatening.
If you're going to stand in front of advancing law enforcement, whether one officer or a line, be prepared to be hit in the head with a solid baton. Being hit in the head with a solid baton can be fatal.
He showed me the scar where the baton split his scalp open.
ICE believes they are law enforcement. So far, the courts seem to agree with them. They don't have batons, they have guns, which are much more dangerous (any fool can point and pull a trigger; batons take at least minimal training). They have less training about crowds than riot police, are milling around, lack explicit shields, so are more dangerous. The biggest difference I see is that the Chicago PD in riot gear were actually anonymous. I'm slightly amazed that we know who the ICE person behind the mask was.
Charles was actually agreeing with you. If these thugs were real law enforcement, they would routinely wear body cams. (Which, be it noted, are also real useful if there's an actual court case to be made in these situations.). The reason they weren't wearing them is that they are nothing like real law enforcement.
That timing of the snatch happening just after meeting with the Chinese has been taken by some as a warning to China, and it is difficult to imagine that the US didn’t know Maduro’s schedule, however, I would have expected Trump to crow about it in some way, so maybe it was dumb luck?
I would expect that, if the timing was dumb luck, Trump would be crowing like it was his brilliant planning. Neither do I think it likely it was a warning -- that would be a level of subtlety the current administration seems incapable of.
I think a more likely possibility is that it was carefully timed out of (absolutely never under any circumstances to be admitted!) fear of the possible Chinese reaction. Trump might (probably did) warn his buddy Putin, so Russians would be moved out of harms' way. But, not having that kind of BFF relationship with Xi, what was left was careful timing.
CharlesWT: There’s a reason for LEOs to wear body cams. Had he been wearing one, it might be clearer exactly what happened.
"LEOs" and storm troopers are not the same thing.
"LEOs" don't wear masks.
"LEOs" have limits on their authority and their jurisdiction.
"LEOs" who work for ICE don't have the authority to write you so much as a parking ticket, let alone order you out of your car.
"LEOs" do things like execute arrest warrants, not execute civilians.
If it's not clear to you "what happened", seek help. If you think the murderous Jonathan Ross was just trying to do his job, ask your favorite AI what his assigned job was, that day, because I doubt that body cam footage would tell you.
I'm sure there were Americans in the 1930s who would have defined the Gestapo as "Law Enforcement Officers", but I like to think those Americans would not have called themselves Libertarians(TM).
Even the science guy didn't mention that she backed up before going forward (going forward while steering to the right, which he does mention).
If Renee Good was trying to kill the guy, she was really bad at it and had very little idea of how to operate a vehicle. Also, too, Ross was really bad at getting out of the way if that's was he was trying to do.
normally apolitical YT science guy, Hank Green, has some thoughts about how certain peoples' reaction to Good's shooting says something about their relationship to truth.
Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun.
Yeah. "Activist fun." I'm sure that there are some thrill seekers sprinkled through those crowds - mostly energy drink aged males looking to prove their courage - but given all we have seen of this administrations violence and disregard for civil rights and the rule of law, most all of those folks who are showing up are there despite the danger.
Moms with young kids being so well known for seeking out potentially deadly encounters just for fun because they saw it on the internet...
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
It's a simple statement that has outsized explanatory value, unfortunately.
so… mind reading is bad, except when it’s a hippy ?
It's odd that, while I'm sure there have always been people upset about what ICE has been doing, there are now far more. It seems to have coincided with ICE doing more and worse things in places where they used to do much less. It appears that ICE has increased fear and chaos in places that were relatively peaceful before ICE got there.
Maybe there's a cause-and-effect thing going on here.
speaking of mind reading... more from the guy over at NRO who brought us "To hell with Minnesota":
Unlike the rest of the internet’s commentators, I am not so gifted a reader of souls as to draw conclusions from a 30-second encounter.
a glimmer of hope!
What I see instead is a “scissors statement” event: A moment almost purpose-designed to divide viewers by their partisan priors rather than their analytical instincts. And I have mine: My sympathy instinctively tends toward the ICE officer, dealing with yet another vacant-eyed, internet-primed activist blocking traffic, unaware of what a fraught situation she is interfering with.
alas.
...
The wife, realizing that arrest might be imminent, shouted, “Drive, baby, drive!” at Good as Good hit the accelerator. Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun. I have no idea what the officer thought, having only his cellphone footage to go by, though I do not think that using the word “bitch” after such an instantaneous and fatal shooting means anything other than his adrenaline was up.
But there I go, attempting to read minds.
but... ok. 2nd chance!
And that is decidedly above my pay grade. I do know this much: There currently exists a vast swath of people on the activist left who either implicitly or explicitly deny the legal authority of ICE to exist and do what it does — out of ignorance, or, more often, simply because they believe it to be “unrighteous.”"
so... mind reading is bad, except when it's a hippy ?
I don’t know. It’s crazy and exhausting. I’m becoming increasingly disgusted by human nature. I was starting think we were in the early stages of turning away from this bullsh*t, but that’s been put to rest.
Going on a tangent here, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what animates these militia, white power, and Christian nationalist types. Is it that hard to be happy and chill the f**k out?
I'm sure it's the fault of all the woke social justice warriors who get upset when right-wingers try to make vulnerable people's lives worse. Maybe don't f**k with other people so much?
I don't know. It's crazy and exhausting. I'm becoming increasingly disgusted by human nature. I was starting think we were in the early stages of turning away from this bullsh*t, but that's been put to rest.
as far as i can see, all there are are masked thugs doing thuggish things with the full backing of a gang of thuggish morons, who were elected by drooling wannabe thugs.
Certainly there is an enormous amount of that on the streets. But that behavior inevitable gets a lot more attention. Just as a riot which extends across a half dozen city blocks, in a city of several million, is all you will see on the news.
But consider the last time you arrived on an international flight. The guy doing customs inspections was also ICE (customs enforcement, right?). But, at least in my observation, those folks are courteous and polite to everybody, regardless of how they look or what their proficiency in English. If all of ICE was the thugs, I'd expect something less.
"But it is not helpful if the goal is to solve a problem, or change a behavior which some of the group is engaging in."
as far as i can see, all there are are masked thugs doing thuggish things with the full backing of a gang of thuggish morons, who were elected by drooling wannabe thugs.
the good apples should try to show off all the good stuff they're doing.
nous, thanks for that link. The article had this Venezuela has been the biggest recipient of official Chinese loans and grants in South America, accepting about $106bn between 2000 and 2023, according to AidData, a research centre at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
those dates were interesting, and I asked Gemini about the pattern of Chinese loans to Venezuela and it gave me this
According to data tracking from AidData and the Inter-American Dialogue, there was a massive pivot in Chinese credit starting around 2015–2016.
The Financial Shift (2015–2023)
If we isolate the period from 2015 to 2023, the total amount of new official Chinese loans and grants to Venezuela is approximately $15 billion to $18 billion. While that number sounds large, it represents a dramatic 85% decrease in the pace of lending compared to the previous decade. Here is the breakdown of why that number is so much lower:
The 2015 Peak: 2015 was effectively the "last hurrah" of major lending, highlighted by a $5 billion loan for the "Joint Chinese-Venezuelan Fund" and another $5 billion for oil development.
The 2016 Freeze: After 2016, Beijing largely stopped issuing new, large-scale discretionary loans. From 2017 to 2023, new lending dropped to near zero.
The "Grace Period" Era: Since 2020, the relationship has shifted from providing new cash to managing existing debt. China has primarily focused on granting repayment waivers or "grace periods" rather than sending new capital.
Why the sudden drop?
The transition between these two timeframes highlights a change in Chinese foreign policy and Venezuela’s internal stability: Interestingly, while Venezuela was the top recipient from 2000 to 2023, if you look only at the 2015–2023 window, countries like Brazil and Argentina became more active recipients of Chinese capital (particularly in infrastructure and energy) as China sought more stable investment environments.
Chavez died in 2013, so the Chinese may have seen the writing on the wall for Maduro.
The AidData site is a nice catch and has several working papers that might be of interest, The overall tenor of the papers are that China is being quite resourceful in making sure that they don't get burned.
There's some speculation there that China is not ready and willing yet to take on the US in South America, and this move by the US has shown the rest of the continent that Xi is mostly talk.
But if the US gets entangled in Venezuela, and allows itself to get drawn into something with Israel and Iran, and the US is still making noise about Greenland, that's three expensive fronts that will sap money, power, and good will pretty damn quick. Any two of those three would make pivoting to defend Taiwan a heavy lift, or a hard choice of priorities.
And Putin is bound to be watching all of this with interest as well.
The US administration is making bold moves with some powerful pieces, but they run the risk of being forked if they don't take care with their support.
I read this book about the border militias back when it first came out as part of a research project that I put on hiatus in favor of more focus on environmentalism and climate change.
I think the ICE and BP recruiting campaign under this administration is squarely aimed at bringing these border militias and the other racist/nativist paramilitary groups into the federal law enforcement community.
It also fits well with all of the recruitment that the alt-right and the white power folks and the Christian nationalist were doing with veterans and law enforcement. There's a lot of snuggling up going on.
wj: I think it’s useful to distinguish between those ICE officers who have been hired under Trump and those who were not.
nous: I’m under the impression that US Border Patrol in particular has always been a Hive of Scum and Villainy
My take is that the history of the two agencies comes into play. It's a bit convoluted, but my take is that ICE is fundamentally a post 9-11 creature, being spun off when the INS was reorganized under Homeland Security (and everyone may want to reflect on what they said about the whole idea of 'Homeland Security'. If you engaged in hippy punching when people complained about how words like this could lead to bad outcomes, you may want to rethink your prior opinions) The Border Patrol was under INS, with roots back to 1924, and was also spun off, but seems to have a longer history to fall back on.
This has me think that the Border Patrol has its prejudices baked in, but ICE is more of a res nova. CBP were (or are, hard to tell these days) limited to performing duties within 100 miles of the border and were often called on to work with the DEA for drug smuggling. I was pretty surprised when I looked at Wikipedia and read this As early as 1998, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service implemented the Border Safety Initiative in response to concerns about the number of aliens injured or killed while attempting to cross the border. It was noted that Border Patrol agents routinely supplied water, food, and medical care to aliens.[48] That same year, Border Patrol, Search, Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR), a specialized unit trained in emergency search and rescue, was established with the purpose of assisting injured or stranded aliens at remote locations.
However, the stories of the Border Patrol destroying survival caches is also well documented, which strikes me as bureaucratic behavior ('we will save them, but only on our terms!' sort of shit)
ICE was also spun off from INS, but consisted of the criminal investigators as opposed to border security and port of entry. I imagine this creates a different mindset which, added to the lack of any geographical restriction invites a grander mindset.
I think this ends up with ICE being more performative. Of course, for CBP, you have Homan and Bovino, while ICE is more often represented by Noem, so I guess 6 of 1. But reports of Stephen Millier making demands about quotas are addressed to ICE as opposed to CBP. It's probably a lot easier to bend the rules when you don't have so much to fall back on.
In regard to wj's pleas to consider the good ICE agents, I'm thinking that deTrumpification is going to demand that everyone been tossed out. For example, Ross, who is the person who has been identified as murdering Nicole Good, was originally in the CBP for 10 years before moving to ICE in 2015.
Then there's this tweet from Friday, an ICE recruitment ad featuring the turn of phrase "We will have our home again" plastered over an image of a man on horseback and a stealth bomber flying in the distance. That's a reference to the song "We'll Have Our Home Again," a white supremacist anthem favored by the Proud Boys.
The song in question having been recorded by right wing folkish Odinists - the neo-pagan equivalent of the Christian Identity lowlife that were so prevalent in the MI militia scene that gave us OK City.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “An open thread”
This reminds me of a maxim about doing large projects: "Three things everyone wants - fast, cheap, and good. But you can really only have any two of them."
The tRump admin has broken this rule and has chosen "fast" twice.
"
David Brooks is too much of a coward to actually look at the evidence and try to render any judgment. Doing that would destroy his ability to find the right angle to flatten any difference and equivocate.
Meanwhile, since we were discussing who these people in masks are, and what motivates them...
https://web.archive.org/web/20260113135117/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-recruitment-minneapolis-shooting.html
The other gem in this piece:
When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
Enjoy!*
*If you are a masochist.
"
Disgusting as that NRO pos is, David Brooks got their first, flying his flag
https://youtu.be/QQiiNa-X_eU?si=GmdEkMAJZmN1qGad&t=141
I never really understood why the National Review was able to recover from being unapologetically racist
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/
but you can see that deep down, they never really changed.
"
I am reminded of an acquaintance who was in Chicago in 1968, and his advice for protesters.
He showed me the scar where the baton split his scalp open.
ICE believes they are law enforcement. So far, the courts seem to agree with them. They don't have batons, they have guns, which are much more dangerous (any fool can point and pull a trigger; batons take at least minimal training). They have less training about crowds than riot police, are milling around, lack explicit shields, so are more dangerous. The biggest difference I see is that the Chicago PD in riot gear were actually anonymous. I'm slightly amazed that we know who the ICE person behind the mask was.
"
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
Seconded
"
Take a deep breath, Tiny. A slow deep breath.
Charles was actually agreeing with you. If these thugs were real law enforcement, they would routinely wear body cams. (Which, be it noted, are also real useful if there's an actual court case to be made in these situations.). The reason they weren't wearing them is that they are nothing like real law enforcement.
On “¿Qué quieres decir cuando dices China, por favor?”
That timing of the snatch happening just after meeting with the Chinese has been taken by some as a warning to China, and it is difficult to imagine that the US didn’t know Maduro’s schedule, however, I would have expected Trump to crow about it in some way, so maybe it was dumb luck?
I would expect that, if the timing was dumb luck, Trump would be crowing like it was his brilliant planning. Neither do I think it likely it was a warning -- that would be a level of subtlety the current administration seems incapable of.
I think a more likely possibility is that it was carefully timed out of (absolutely never under any circumstances to be admitted!) fear of the possible Chinese reaction. Trump might (probably did) warn his buddy Putin, so Russians would be moved out of harms' way. But, not having that kind of BFF relationship with Xi, what was left was careful timing.
On “An open thread”
CharlesWT: There’s a reason for LEOs to wear body cams. Had he been wearing one, it might be clearer exactly what happened.
"LEOs" and storm troopers are not the same thing.
"LEOs" don't wear masks.
"LEOs" have limits on their authority and their jurisdiction.
"LEOs" who work for ICE don't have the authority to write you so much as a parking ticket, let alone order you out of your car.
"LEOs" do things like execute arrest warrants, not execute civilians.
If it's not clear to you "what happened", seek help. If you think the murderous Jonathan Ross was just trying to do his job, ask your favorite AI what his assigned job was, that day, because I doubt that body cam footage would tell you.
I'm sure there were Americans in the 1930s who would have defined the Gestapo as "Law Enforcement Officers", but I like to think those Americans would not have called themselves Libertarians(TM).
--TP
"
Even the science guy didn't mention that she backed up before going forward (going forward while steering to the right, which he does mention).
If Renee Good was trying to kill the guy, she was really bad at it and had very little idea of how to operate a vehicle. Also, too, Ross was really bad at getting out of the way if that's was he was trying to do.
"
normally apolitical YT science guy, Hank Green, has some thoughts about how certain peoples' reaction to Good's shooting says something about their relationship to truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyStPztM7eo
"
Maybe they thought they would simply make their escape after having had their activist fun.
Yeah. "Activist fun." I'm sure that there are some thrill seekers sprinkled through those crowds - mostly energy drink aged males looking to prove their courage - but given all we have seen of this administrations violence and disregard for civil rights and the rule of law, most all of those folks who are showing up are there despite the danger.
Moms with young kids being so well known for seeking out potentially deadly encounters just for fun because they saw it on the internet...
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
"
It's a simple statement that has outsized explanatory value, unfortunately.
It's odd that, while I'm sure there have always been people upset about what ICE has been doing, there are now far more. It seems to have coincided with ICE doing more and worse things in places where they used to do much less. It appears that ICE has increased fear and chaos in places that were relatively peaceful before ICE got there.
Maybe there's a cause-and-effect thing going on here.
"
"..., having only his cellphone footage to go by, ..."
There's a reason for LEOs to wear body cams. Had he been wearing one, it might be clearer exactly what happened.
"
speaking of mind reading... more from the guy over at NRO who brought us "To hell with Minnesota":
a glimmer of hope!
alas.
but... ok. 2nd chance!
so... mind reading is bad, except when it's a hippy ?
"
"what animates these militia, white power, and Christian nationalist types"
I'll pretend to be a mind reader for a minute and take a guess.
For some, fear, that they are unable to acknowledge, so they compensate.
And some people are just fucking bullies.
"
I don’t know. It’s crazy and exhausting. I’m becoming increasingly disgusted by human nature. I was starting think we were in the early stages of turning away from this bullsh*t, but that’s been put to rest.
i approve this message
"
Going on a tangent here, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what animates these militia, white power, and Christian nationalist types. Is it that hard to be happy and chill the f**k out?
I'm sure it's the fault of all the woke social justice warriors who get upset when right-wingers try to make vulnerable people's lives worse. Maybe don't f**k with other people so much?
I don't know. It's crazy and exhausting. I'm becoming increasingly disgusted by human nature. I was starting think we were in the early stages of turning away from this bullsh*t, but that's been put to rest.
Happy New Year...
"
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
"
Certainly there is an enormous amount of that on the streets. But that behavior inevitable gets a lot more attention. Just as a riot which extends across a half dozen city blocks, in a city of several million, is all you will see on the news.
But consider the last time you arrived on an international flight. The guy doing customs inspections was also ICE (customs enforcement, right?). But, at least in my observation, those folks are courteous and polite to everybody, regardless of how they look or what their proficiency in English. If all of ICE was the thugs, I'd expect something less.
"
"But it is not helpful if the goal is to solve a problem, or change a behavior which some of the group is engaging in."
as far as i can see, all there are are masked thugs doing thuggish things with the full backing of a gang of thuggish morons, who were elected by drooling wannabe thugs.
the good apples should try to show off all the good stuff they're doing.
On “¿Qué quieres decir cuando dices China, por favor?”
nous, thanks for that link. The article had this
Venezuela has been the biggest recipient of official Chinese loans and grants in South America, accepting about $106bn between 2000 and 2023, according to AidData, a research centre at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
those dates were interesting, and I asked Gemini about the pattern of Chinese loans to Venezuela and it gave me this
According to data tracking from AidData and the Inter-American Dialogue, there was a massive pivot in Chinese credit starting around 2015–2016.
The Financial Shift (2015–2023)
If we isolate the period from 2015 to 2023, the total amount of new official Chinese loans and grants to Venezuela is approximately $15 billion to $18 billion.
While that number sounds large, it represents a dramatic 85% decrease in the pace of lending compared to the previous decade. Here is the breakdown of why that number is so much lower:
Why the sudden drop?
The transition between these two timeframes highlights a change in Chinese foreign policy and Venezuela’s internal stability:
Interestingly, while Venezuela was the top recipient from 2000 to 2023, if you look only at the 2015–2023 window, countries like Brazil and Argentina became more active recipients of Chinese capital (particularly in infrastructure and energy) as China sought more stable investment environments.
Chavez died in 2013, so the Chinese may have seen the writing on the wall for Maduro.
The AidData site is a nice catch and has several working papers that might be of interest, The overall tenor of the papers are that China is being quite resourceful in making sure that they don't get burned.
"
The Economist article:
https://www.economist.com/china/2026/01/05/americas-raid-on-venezuela-reveals-the-limits-of-chinas-reach?giftId=OTVmZjAzMmEtNzA0Zi00MzA0LTllZWYtNTQ5ODUxOGU4MWJh&utm_campaign=gifted_article
There's some speculation there that China is not ready and willing yet to take on the US in South America, and this move by the US has shown the rest of the continent that Xi is mostly talk.
But if the US gets entangled in Venezuela, and allows itself to get drawn into something with Israel and Iran, and the US is still making noise about Greenland, that's three expensive fronts that will sap money, power, and good will pretty damn quick. Any two of those three would make pivoting to defend Taiwan a heavy lift, or a hard choice of priorities.
And Putin is bound to be watching all of this with interest as well.
The US administration is making bold moves with some powerful pieces, but they run the risk of being forked if they don't take care with their support.
On “An open thread”
I read this book about the border militias back when it first came out as part of a research project that I put on hiatus in favor of more focus on environmentalism and climate change.
https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-law-into-their-own-hands
I think the ICE and BP recruiting campaign under this administration is squarely aimed at bringing these border militias and the other racist/nativist paramilitary groups into the federal law enforcement community.
It also fits well with all of the recruitment that the alt-right and the white power folks and the Christian nationalist were doing with veterans and law enforcement. There's a lot of snuggling up going on.
"
wj: I think it’s useful to distinguish between those ICE officers who have been hired under Trump and those who were not.
nous: I’m under the impression that US Border Patrol in particular has always been a Hive of Scum and Villainy
My take is that the history of the two agencies comes into play. It's a bit convoluted, but my take is that ICE is fundamentally a post 9-11 creature, being spun off when the INS was reorganized under Homeland Security (and everyone may want to reflect on what they said about the whole idea of 'Homeland Security'. If you engaged in hippy punching when people complained about how words like this could lead to bad outcomes, you may want to rethink your prior opinions) The Border Patrol was under INS, with roots back to 1924, and was also spun off, but seems to have a longer history to fall back on.
This has me think that the Border Patrol has its prejudices baked in, but ICE is more of a res nova. CBP were (or are, hard to tell these days) limited to performing duties within 100 miles of the border and were often called on to work with the DEA for drug smuggling. I was pretty surprised when I looked at Wikipedia and read this
As early as 1998, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service implemented the Border Safety Initiative in response to concerns about the number of aliens injured or killed while attempting to cross the border. It was noted that Border Patrol agents routinely supplied water, food, and medical care to aliens.[48] That same year, Border Patrol, Search, Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR), a specialized unit trained in emergency search and rescue, was established with the purpose of assisting injured or stranded aliens at remote locations.
However, the stories of the Border Patrol destroying survival caches is also well documented, which strikes me as bureaucratic behavior ('we will save them, but only on our terms!' sort of shit)
ICE was also spun off from INS, but consisted of the criminal investigators as opposed to border security and port of entry. I imagine this creates a different mindset which, added to the lack of any geographical restriction invites a grander mindset.
I think this ends up with ICE being more performative. Of course, for CBP, you have Homan and Bovino, while ICE is more often represented by Noem, so I guess 6 of 1. But reports of Stephen Millier making demands about quotas are addressed to ICE as opposed to CBP. It's probably a lot easier to bend the rules when you don't have so much to fall back on.
In regard to wj's pleas to consider the good ICE agents, I'm thinking that deTrumpification is going to demand that everyone been tossed out. For example, Ross, who is the person who has been identified as murdering Nicole Good, was originally in the CBP for 10 years before moving to ICE in 2015.
"
More fun!:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-administration-posts-echo-rhetoric-linked-to-extremist-groups
The song in question having been recorded by right wing folkish Odinists - the neo-pagan equivalent of the Christian Identity lowlife that were so prevalent in the MI militia scene that gave us OK City.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.