Collusion between anti-immigrant organizations and some federal immigration union leaders and officers have led to the injection of “negative biases into the broader immigration debate,” according to a new Center for New Community report released Tuesday. According to the report, that collusion has had dangerous consequences. It’s lent “undeserved credibility” to anti-immigrant groups, helped advance policies that “malign immigrant communities,” and has undermined efforts to pass future immigration reform.
The report, entitled “Blurring Borders: Collusion between Anti-Immigrant Groups and Immigration Enforcement Agents,” alleged that anti-immigrant organizations developed sources within the Department of Homeland Security to leak data directly to them, as well as “cultivated spokespersons from within these unions who are willing to echo their messaging and to advocate for their policy goals.”
The collaboration to support a more restrictive immigration agenda and to undermine the president’s actions on immigration extended to agency union leaders from the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) and the National ICE Council who have been called used as witnesses at Congressional hearings as “credible, neutral experts on our country’s immigration system.”
The report also alleged several instances of collaboration between immigration officials and the immigration-restrictionist organizations Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The Southern Poverty Law Center has called FAIR a hate group.
“Evidence of collusion, according to the report, includes the fact many union leaders within DHS have advocated for immigration policy identical to those advocated by the anti-immigration movement — specifically that of CIS, said [Anu] Joshi of Center for New Community,” Al Jazeera reported.
In one instance that occurred earlier this year, NBPC Local 1613, an immigration agency union based in Southern California, thanked two of its elected union representatives on Twitter for “showing the truth on the southern border” during a “border tour for CIS.”
In another instance, Chris Crane, the president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council, received indirect financial help when he led a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the president’s 2012 executive action to shield some undocumented immigrants from deportation. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) announced that he would represent Crane in the lawsuit and NumbersUSA “announced that it would cover all legal fees incurred for the duration of the suit,” the report stated.
The collusion report comes on the heels of a new interim government report, which found that the number of allegations of corruption involving Customs and Border Protection employees, another Department of Homeland Security agency tasked with federal immigration duties, “may be increasing.” The scathing report found that the CBP Office of Internal Affairs is “woefully understaffed” leaving CBP at “risk of systemic corruption and potential scandal.” But while the government report doesn’t touch on the ICE agency, there have been a number of other troubling allegations against immigration agents generally, including sexual assault (especially among LGBT detainees) that has taken place in detention, sometimes by guards.