During a Senate hearing on immigration reform, Tuesday, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions butt heads with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano over the performance of ICE officials.
Under his tough questioning, he was able to get her to admit that low moral is a problem throughout her department.
Sessions asked if Napolitano had met with the ICE Employee’s Union head, Chris Crane, and she replied that she had not.
Sessions continued to press Napolitano on ICE, asking her if she was aware of the lawsuit filed by ICE union chief Chris Crane against Napolitano, ICE Director John Morton and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas over the administration’s changes to immigration policy.
Senator, under his direction, ICE is actually increased its enforcement efforts,” she replied. “It’s installed real priorities for the first time. He actually gets criticized for deporting too many people as opposed to not enough people. So it’s a difficult, difficult job to have but, when you look overall at the operation of ICE and where it was four years ago, they have removed more people, they have installed real priorities, and we now have secure communities installed nationally.”
“I couldn’t disagree more,” Sessions fired back. “I can’t disagree more about that. That’s not what the officers are saying. That’s not what Chris Crane, the head of the association, testified to yesterday.”
Watch:
At a press conference, Monday, Chris Crane contradicted Napolitano’s repeated claims that the border is safer than ever under her tenure, charging that DHS manipulates stats to inflate deportation figures.
“DHS and ICE knowingly manipulate arrest and deportation data with the specific intent of misleading the American public”, he said.
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