More: Noem's remarks understandably spooked a lot of people. Vanessa Crdenas, executive director of the immigrant-rights group America's Voice, said details about ICE's plans should send a chill down every American's spine.
"Take a teenager with more testosterone than wisdom, arm them with guns and masks, fast cars and"to top it off"dangle cash incentives for indiscriminate and speedy arrests," she said. "Mix in an ICE culture of impunity and overreach. Now, what could go wrong?"
And there's precedent for a move like this creating problems. Deb Fleishaker, who served more than a dozen years at DHS, told me that in previous cases when standards were relaxed and hiring spiked, corruption among Customs and Border Patrol agents went through the roof. One study found that arrests of CBP employees rose 44 percent from 2007 to 2012. A New York Times investigation found that over a ten-year period, CBP employees and contractors took $15 million in bribes.
"We've seen with DHS when they've reduced hiring requirements it's gone very badly," Fleishaker said. "I think standards and training are hugely important to doing the job appropriately and carefully. This is further evidence that the Department cares about the numbers of bodies and numbers of arrests, without counterbalancing what the impact of those bodies and arrests will be."
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Chris Newman, the general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and a lawyer for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, said that, with the huge ramping up of recruiting and the dropping of age limits, he fears ICE may end up composed of agents who were rejected from every other law enforcement agency. Consciously or not, he warned, the administration was giving people from the fringes of society power over those with less power.
"It's a commonly known fact that recruiting efforts in the past have attracted the bottom of the barrel in terms of talent," he said. But now, he added, "it's no laughing matter to think of the type of disturbed individuals that they are attracting."
