ANALYSIS.
When CNN said 'the purpose of ICE is to make the community safer' and recorded raids with agents
The networks have retrieved a report by journalist Pamela Brown and her team involved in an Obama-era agency operation, in which she praised the work of officers.
CNN reporter Pamela Brown is fitted with a bulletproof vest by an ICE agent.
Ten years ago, a CNN report picked up that "the purpose of ICE is to make the community safer" and recorded raids with agents exclusively. Today, the network reflects those who define the agency as "Trump's Gestapo" and is one of the main critical voices against Donald Trump's immigration policy and the entity itself.
Social media has retrieved a report from May 31, 2016, at the height of the Obama era - known as "Deporter- in-Chief" because he holds the record for illegal alien departures -, in which reporter Pamela Brown and her team were involved in an ICE raid in Chicago in search of several undocumented immigrants with criminal records to proceed with their arrest.
A radical turnaround in barely a decade
Unlike the current critical tone, Brown speaks of what she experienced in a laudatory manner. Just from the beginning of the report, it is clear that the network's position back then was not exactly aligned with their current one:
"Just before the sun rises in the Windy City, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fan out across Chicago to arrest criminals in the U.S. illegally. CNN was granted exclusive access to witness some of those raids. A day with ICE in the 'Sanctuary City' of Chicago."
The recording then shows the agents' work and their conversations with the reporter throughout the night. For example, the officers' dissatisfaction with Cook County's sanctuary laws that prohibit local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE. In a tagline, the network noted that "ICE claims the county's ordinance poses a danger to the community by releasing undocumented offenders and returning them to the streets."
Brown even makes excuses for the "confusion" and arrest of the wrong person
Brown even made excuses for the "confusion" involved in such operations that agents mistakenly detained another person. "This may look organized, but in this moment, confusion. ICE agents mistakenly arrest the target’s brother," the reporter noted. The wanted illegal immigrant was eventually arrested as well.
The bottom line of the night, which was graphically summarized in the story, was: "On this day ICE detained 6 for possible deportation. Two of them were released because they didn’t have criminal records."
The story also carried the statements of an agent explaining the third arrest of the night: "He is a criminal, he has extensive criminal history, and by taking him out of the community, it’s making the community safer and that’s ICE’s purpose."
The left insists it's ICE's tactics that have changed
Thus, they point out that during the Obama era, in which more people were deported, there were the so-called "silent raids" and the returns at the border itself. The Democratic administration in these times, "emphasized employer prosecution, civil I-9 audits and targeted operations," the report summarizes factually.
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