'Happy hunting!' Immigration Agents Swapped Cheery Messages About Raids, Records Reveal
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Source: The Guardian
US immigration officials planning countrywide raids targeting thousands of undocumented immigrants wrote cheerful messages about the potential arrests, wishing one another “Happy hunting!”, jokingly calling the initiative “Operation Super Epic Mega”, and saying the work was “fun”, records show.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) documents released on Wednesday show how officials at the agency prepared for a set of coordinated raids in 2017 that aimed to detain more than 8,000 people for deportation. The agency officially called it “Operation Mega” and officials boasted in the documents that it would be the “largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE, targeting all aliens who are present in the United States in violation of the [law]”. Some documents also suggested field offices might have had specific arrest quotas.
The records, obtained by the immigrant rights groups Mijente and Detention Watch Network, were released the same week that the not-for-profit news organization ProPublica uncovered a secret Facebook group where Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers posted racist, misogynistic and violent content about immigrants and Democratic members of Congress.
And their release comes as Donald Trump renewed his threat of fresh Ice raids, after calling off a coordinated action targeting undocumented immigrants across the country in late June. -MORE...
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/03/ice-us-immigration-messages-raids
According to the documents, one Ice official in Austin, Texas enthusiastically wrote about detentions: “We had more apprehensions today than any other day during this operation. Awesome job!!” In another one August planning email, an official asked another person if they would like to be on an “arrest team” and the person responded: “YOU KNOW IT!!!!!!”
Along with with the recent report on the offensive CBP Facebook group, the new Ice records suggested systemic problems among the different agencies involved in immigration enforcement, said Gonzalez: “They have a department-wide problem … They frequently say inhumane and offensive things that are meant to dehumanize.”
Ice spokesman Bourke said in an email that the agency “does not condone the use of offensive or politically-charged language in reference to agency enforcement operations”, adding that “any employee found to have acted in a manner that negatively portrays the agency … or embarrasses the agency … will be held accountable and may be subject to disciplinary measures”.
Officers were “expected to conduct enforcement humanely, respectfully and with professionalism”, adding: “ICE operations are driven by the agency’s mission to enforce the nation’s immigration laws and to uphold national security, border security and public safety,” Bourke said.
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