August 4, 2008, - 4:58 pm
ICE Agents Respond to Obama, Sort of
By Debbie Schlussel
Many Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sent me a July 22 letter written “on their behalf” to Barack Hussein Obama in response to Obama’s outrageous comments at the La Raza convention, at which Obama characterized ICE agents as terrorists.
While the letter is pretty good, the author isn’t. Art Gordon, the letter writer, is president of FLEOA, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. He’s part of the reason ICE is such a joke and Obama can get away with attacking the agency, unchallenged. That’s because–in opposition to most ICE agents–Gordon (who is NOT an ICE agent) supported President Bush in his nomination of the incompetent, unqualified Julie L. Myers a/k/a “The ICE Princess” to head ICE. That undue endorsement went a long way for her and she used it in getting Senate support for her nomination.
FLEOA is not a union. Many ICE agents don’t belong to it. They don’t want to pay exorbitant dues to people like Gordon who claim to speak on their behalf and endorse positions and parties anathema to their interests. One such agent was the principled Matt Issman, a then-career ICE agent and then-Vice President of FLEOA, who was sickened by Gordon’s endorsement of Myers and who publicly spoke out against it.
And most agents view many of those involved in FLEOA as social-climbing resume-packers, such as former FLEOA Vice President Brian M. Moskowitz a/k/a “Abu Moskowitz,” ICE’s Islamopandering, terrorist-schmoozing Michigan/Ohio Special Agent in Charge. When he held office in FLEOA, he was schmoozing Congressmen in his quest to head ICE and climb the ladder. And Moskowitz endorsed–in the Washington Post–the jack-booted INS kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives, after which he was returned to Castro’s Communist tyranny.
So, while the letter to Obama was good, you have to consider the source, Mr. Gordon, and how he helped usher ICE into the Julie Myers era and into clowndom and Rodney Dangerfield-ness.
And take it with a grain of salt. Remember, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Tick-tock.
Certainly I agree with the point of the letter defending the ICE agents as honorable people and dedicated professionals. They are the exact opposite of being terrorists. I was struck though, by the lack of substance in the letter regarding current immigration policy and the lack of real systematic enforcement; nothing about enforcing the laws against illegal immigration, or identifying illegal immigrants, and applying existing immigration laws to them. The reference to needed immigration reform makes me wonder whether the McCain campaign might have inspired this document. Certainly any letter referring to the professionals enforcing the law ought to ask for a pardon for two agents, Ramos and Compaen who have just lost their appeals case and should immediately be pardoned.
c f on August 4, 2008 at 7:07 pm