Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): News reports indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Customs and Border Protections (CBP) officers unions, who were actively involved in shaping immigration under former President Trump, are undermining the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Both CBP and ICE’s unions—respectively, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) and the AFGE National ICE Council (NIC)—made the unprecedented move of endorsing Donald Trump in 2016, the first time the unions had ever endorsed a presidential candidate. The public deserves answers about whether these politicized unions are undermining a new administration’s policy priorities.
Their loyalty did not go unnoticed. The union presidents, Brandon Judd of NBPC and Chris Crane of NIC, apparently had a direct line of communication with Trump that bypassed official reporting channels, which has apparently emboldened the unions under Biden. In one instance of outsized influence, Judd “appeared at a joint press conference with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, at which the governor denounced Biden’s reversal of Trump-era policies and announced that he’d be sending Texas Department of Public Safety officers to the border.”
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