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.
2 weeks ago
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.
3 weeks ago
This is funny
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-08/us-spy-chief-gabbard-excluded-from-maduro-plan-over-past-views
The move to cut Gabbard out of the meetings was so well-known that some White House aides joked that the acronym of her title, DNI, stood for “Do Not Invite,” according to three of the people. They asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. A White House official denied there was any such joke.
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.
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.
This is funny
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-08/us-spy-chief-gabbard-excluded-from-maduro-plan-over-past-views
The move to cut Gabbard out of the meetings was so well-known that some White House aides joked that the acronym of her title, DNI, stood for “Do Not Invite,” according to three of the people. They asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. A White House official denied there was any such joke.