Thread: Resignation of the Assistant Secretary of ICE Julie Myers

Statement by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the Resignation of the Assistant Secretary of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Release Date: November 5, 2008

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

Assistant Secretary Julie Myers has announced that she will depart the department on Nov. 15. Julie has been an extraordinary Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and when she approached me in mid-September to discuss her departure, I knew this would be a loss for the department. Julie has been a major force in transforming ICE into a 21st century law enforcement agency.

Under Julie's leadership, ICE has undertaken exceptional law enforcement operations with unprecedented results. She has instituted and overseen several key law enforcement programs that have dramatically enhanced the department's efforts to curb illegal immigration and ensure strong enforcement of customs laws. ICE has set enforcement records for three consecutive fiscal years in criminal alien and fugitive arrests, worksite enforcement, and overall alien removals. She has implemented programs that have transformed how federal, state and local law enforcement work together, share information and enhance public safety. As a result, ICE has had a five-fold increase in the arrest of gang members and associates since 2005, as well as a four-fold increase in fugitive operations teams. These teams have arrested twice the number of fugitives as in fiscal year 2006, resulting in the first ever decline of the fugitive alien population.

Julie also led efforts to identify and charge criminal aliens incarcerated in our nation's prisons and jails, modernize the removal process and provide enhanced oversight for detention operations. She has focused significant attention on counter-proliferation investigations, resulting in a dramatic increase in convictions. She also instituted strong management practices within the agency, resulting in ICE receiving a clean financial audit opinion at the department level. ICE is performing the way that Congress envisioned when it was created over five years ago, in large part due to Julie Myers' service and leadership. These results speak volumes.

I am grateful for Julie's many contributions to the safety and security of our homeland, and I look forward to our continued friendship.

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This page was last reviewed/modified on November 5, 2008.
http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1225920873224.shtm

Isnt Obama supposd to appoint someone else to her position anyway? Isnt Chertoff's position up for grabs too?

Wouldn't someone have to be appointed immediately?

Hmmmm........is there where Obama now calls a halt to enforcement?

Originally Posted by azwreath

Hmmmm........is there where Obama now calls a halt to enforcement?

Obama wont do that, but he will appoint someone like Guiterrez or Mirguria to run DHS and ICE.

We should start calling Senator/President Obama office on immigration.

Good idea. Anyone have the number?

DHS is a cabinet position and Obama is in charge of that. He doesn't hit the White House until January. He's already appointing a First Dog because he told his girls they could have a puppy.

Dixie

(quote)
Bush Immigration Chief Julie Myers Out

By Spencer Hsu
Wasting little time after the election before jumping ship, Julie L. Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will leave the Bush administration on Nov. 15, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announcement today.

Myers, 39, did not say if she planned to re-enter private practice after 12 years in government, but ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said, "She is very passionate about these [immigration] issues and will carry that passion into future endeavors."

Myers, a niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard B. Myers, served as Chertoff's chief of staff when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division. She rejoined Chertoff in 2006 and helped oversee ICE during the Bush administration's failed immigration overhaul push. Her tenure began rockily, as concerns about her youth and lack of previous executive and immigration experience led senators to delay her confirmation, forcing Bush to use a recess appointment to install her. She was finally confirmed by the Senate last December.

More recently, Myers was accused by Democrats of misleading Congress after photographs emerged of Myers at a 2007 Halloween office party honoring a white employee dressed as an escaped prisoner with dreadlocks and makeup that made him look African American or Hispanic. ICE runs the nation's 33,000-bed immigration detention system. Myers subsequently apologized for leaving "a negative impression" of ICE's respect for the people it detains.

Myers has presided over a dramatic increase in enforcement activities and spending at the $5 billion agency, setting records for three fiscal years in arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal records and those violating administrative deportation orders. Actual deportations also soared to record levels during her tenure.

ICE helped drive the political debate over immigration. However, its heavily publicized raids also drew condemnations from civil liberties and immigrant advocacy groups, which say ICE violated humanitarian standards and trampled on due process rights by using criminal-style tactics and charges in massive roundups of workers. Myers also oversaw a burgeoning detention system whose growth has led to noncriminal immigrant detainees often being medically neglected.

In a statement, Chertoff warmly praised Myers as an "extraordinary" assistant secretary for ICE who helped transform it "into a 21st century law enforcement agency." He added, "Under Julie's leadership, ICE has undertaken exceptional law enforcement operations with unprecedented results."

Myers expects to spend more time with her 2-year-old son and husband, John F. Wood, also a former chief of staff to Chertoff, who was appointed U.S. attorney for western Missouri by Bush, Nantel said.

Myers's deputy, John P. Torres, a career law enforcement official and former head of ICE's detention and removal operations, has been designated to serve as acting head of ICE through the presidential transition.(quote)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-tr ... lie_m.html

2 Chronicles 7:14

Originally Posted by vmonkey56

We should start calling Senator/President Obama office on immigration.

Great idea! We need to get the ball rolling as soon as possible to let Obama know that we will not stand for anything other than deportation and enforcment of current laws. I just don't want him to place a sympathiser in charge of something that is supposed to protect us from the invasion. It's like the putting a crack addict in charge of the drug evidence room at a police station.