President Biden will nominate Ed Gonzalez, a sheriff from Texas and critic of the Trump administration’s deportation insurance policies, to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the White House stated on Tuesday.
Mr. Gonzalez would take over an company that has not had a permanent leader since 2017, whilst public scrutiny grew over enforcement of deportation insurance policies. The Trump administration cycled by way of six leaders since 2017 and none have been ever confirmed by the senate. Mr. Gonzalez was elected sheriff of Harris County, Texas, which incorporates Houston, in 2016.
“With a distinguished career in law enforcement and public service, Sheriff Gonzalez is well-suited to lead ICE as the agency advances our public safety and homeland security mission,” stated Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland safety secretary. “I hope the Senate will swiftly confirm Sheriff Gonzalez to this critical position.”
Mr. Biden has vowed to reform ICE, directing the company, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, to prioritize deporting latest border crossers, those that commit aggravated felonies or individuals who pose a menace to nationwide safety. Former President Donald J. Trump gave brokers broad leeway to deport any undocumented immigrant. Mr. Trump’s stance energized some Democrats to name for the company to be abolished.
Mr. Biden has resisted such calls for, as an alternative pledging to rein its enforcement powers. ICE brokers will now have limits on the flexibility to arrest undocumented immigrants at courthouses, the Department of Homeland Security stated on Tuesday.
Neither Mr. Gonzalez nor Chris Magnus, the nominee to head Customs and Border Protection, have ever labored on the Department of Homeland Security. Both officers have, nonetheless, publicly criticized the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, together with deportation raids.
Mr. Gonzalez stated that these raids threatened to deport thousands and thousands of undocumented immigrants, lots of whom posed no instant menace to the United States.
As sheriff of Harris County, Mr. Gonzalez additionally in 2017 withdrew from a partnership with ICE that enables native police to select undocumented immigrants in county jails for deportation.
Mr. Gonzalez, a former member of the Houston City Council who served 18 years within the metropolis’s police division, can even be tasked with uniting an at-times divided company. While ICE is understood for finishing up deportations of undocumented immigrants, that work is especially completed by only one department of the company. The different, Homeland Security Investigations, conducts longer-term investigations into smuggling, terrorism and intercourse trafficking.
