DHS Sets Up Complaint Line For Illegals To Snitch On Federal Agents Who Violate Their ‘New Rights’

Border Patrol agents said the complaint lines amount to a slap in the face to those who put their lives on the line to enforce the law.

“Instead of supporting our agents, this administration has decided it is more important to find new ways to solicit complaints and invite ridicule against them,” said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union that represents line agents. “We demand that this administration spend more time defending the men and women defending our nation and less time promoting the extreme agendas of pro-illegal-immigration organizations.”

He said he would like the Homeland Security Department to set up a complaint line for agents instead, so they could register their concerns over the administration’s failure to enforce laws involving their own pay, the disparity in the firepower they bring to the fight with drug cartels and the administration’s “failure to fully enforce our immigration laws.”

Immigrant rights advocates, meanwhile, are torn over whether complaints have proved effective. Some say they are useful, but others say they rarely produce results and question the department’s ability to investigate complaints against itself.

The Homeland Security Department and CBP issued memos detailing the customer complaint lines last week. CBP’s notice included this invitation: “If you believe you (or a family member) were apprehended and processed by a Customs and Border Protection officer or Border Patrol agent contrary to the new DHS enforcement priorities, please tell us about your experience by contacting the CBP INFO Center.”

The Homeland Security memo says it expects more “questions and feedback” from the amnesty and lists all three complaint lines.

The Obama administration has tried to walk a tight line, insisting it is boosting enforcement even as the president and his political appointees at the Homeland Security Department have carved an ever-widening circle of illegal immigrants for protection in order to appease their advocates.

In the past two years, Mr. Obama has tilted toward the advocates’ position, cutting deportations 20 percent from 2012 to 2014 even as illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border have increased.

In November, Mr. Obama announced an amnesty for illegal immigrant parents whose children are American citizens or legal permanent residents, granting them legal status for three years and work permits entitling them to compete for jobs. He also expanded a 2012 amnesty for illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

He also had top officials at the Homeland Security Department issue “guidance” ordering agents to generally ignore illegal immigrants who have hidden in the U.S. for some time or who claim other extenuating circumstances.

The guidance indicates that agents should not bother pursuing illegal immigrants who don’t have serious criminal records or aren’t recent illegal immigrants, meaning those who arrived in the U.S. since Jan. 1, 2014. Even immigrants convicted of domestic violence may not be “priorities” for deportation if they were also victims at some point.

The guidance has confused and angered immigration agents.

Mr. Moran, testifying to a Senate committee last week, said agents now have to go through a checklist when they encounter illegal immigrants. Those who give the right answers are likely to be released.

“The messaging on the training from CBP has been inconsistent at best,” he said.

Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said it sounded as though immigrants only had to say “magic words” to avoid arrest.

During the border surge this summer, Mr. Moran said, agents discovered that some of the illegal crossers had written scripts with them to coach them on what to say to be released into the U.S.