The Obama administration has finally met a labor union it doesn't like, and the feeling is mutual. In June, a union representing 7,600 employees in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) -- affiliated with both the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO -- issued a unanimous vote of "no confidence" against the political appointees the White House chose to oversee immigration law enforcement.
The National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council specifically named ICE director John Morton and assistant director Phyllis Coven, accusing them of having "abandoned the agency's core mission of enforcing United States Immigration Laws" and "campaigning for programs and policies related to amnesty." The union leaders further charged the Obama administration with the "creation of a special detention system for foreign nationals that exceeds the care and services provided to most United States citizens similarly incarcerated."
Organizations representing border patrol agents had already slammed their upper management at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE. The AFL-CIO-affiliated National Border Patrol Council issued its no-confidence vote last year. The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) concurred. "The U.S. has reached a critical crossroads in dealing with the illegal alien problem," NAFBPO founder Buck Brandemuehl said in a statement. "This problem must be addressed now, as it is strangling our democracy and threatening our national security."
At the same time the Obama administration was requesting funding for 1,000 additional border patrol agents, the National Border Patrol Council complained that it was clandestinely reducing the number of agents along the U.S.-Mexico border by cutting the overtime hours they can work. "By lowering the statutory overtime cap nearly 15 percent through the current administrative restrictions, top-level managers in the Border Patrol are depriving Americans of desperately needed coverage along the border at a time of national crisis," Council head T. J. Bonner told the Washington Times.
