In what may create some discomfort along the campaign trail for Sen. Marco Rubio, video footage of Congressional testimony reveals Rep. Trey Gowdy — who has endorsed Rubio — thanking Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council President Chris Crane for his service to his country.
“I will also thank you for your service,” Gowdy told Crane in 2011 as Crane was testifying before Congress.
This morning, Sen. Rubio seemed to dismiss the service of ICE officer and veteran Chris Crane.
“He’s not an ICE official. He’s the head of a union,” Rubio declared on Fox News. “That individual is not an ICE official; he’s the head of a union.”
The declaration came following Crane’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News in which he detailed how Sen. Rubio treated law enforcement “like absolute trash” and “knowingly mislead the American people” during his push to pass the Gang of Eight bill through the Senate. Crane noted that Rubio “has never apologized” for deceiving law enforcement about the contents of his bill. “Voters beware,” Crane warned, noting that “if elected President, Sen. Rubio’s Gang of Eight bill will be reintroduced and this time it will pass.”
While Rubio attempted to dismiss Crane’s service on national television, the New York Times reported in 2013 that “Mr. Crane testified about the bill in the House Judiciary Committee, securing his record as the most frequent witness on Capitol Hill during this year’s immigration debate and the favorite expert of conservative critics of the Senate measure.”
Yet as The New Yorker reported at the time, Crane was able to secure a meeting with Rubio only after he “successfully embarrassed Rubio into meeting with him on the eve of the introduction of the Gang of Eight’s bill.”
As one GOP Congressional aide told Breitbart News, “This is a desperate attempt to impugn the integrity and character of a career law enforcement officer and U.S. marine…This shows that he has not changed his views since 2013 and it confirms what Chris Crane said in the interview: Rubio does not care about interior enforcement and letting ICE officers do their jobs.”
The irony of Sen. Rubio trying to marginalize ICE officer Crane as a member of a union is that if Crane did not have status in the union, his decision to speak out against Sen. Rubio could result in his termination. What enabled Crane to be able to blow the whistle is that he has been elected by his peers as their national spokesman.
Moreover, the ICE union’s decision to put the country’s security first — rather than being team players inside the administration — has caused them to be snubbed by their own umbrella union of government workers in the AFL-CIO.
This provides an interesting contrast between ICE officers and Sen. Rubio. While ICE officers took enormous professional risk in suing President Obama over his unconstitutional executive amnesty, Sen. Rubio has previously said that as President he would not terminate the program immediately and rescind amnesty papers already issued.
In other words, while Rubio’s immigration efforts have helped him benefit from the largesse of powerful donors, ICE officers’ outspoken criticism of the Administration and the Gang of Eight have garnered them absolutely no gains of a personal or professional nature, other than protecting the integrity of U.S. law and the constitution.
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