Immigration as DHS's Stepchild
By Dan Cadman on May 22, 2019
I agreed with many, probably even most, assertions in a recent blog post, "USCIS Needs Direct Access to Law Enforcement Power to Curb Rampant Immigration Fraud", written by an anonymous but serving government officer, but there are a few things that I think are worth noting because they don't quite fit with my understanding of reality.
First, while I am in no way a detractor of USCIS director Francis Cissna, when I read that "[a]ccording to many in USCIS, Cissna has been the best director in the agency's 16-year history", I feel obliged to observe that that's a low standard. Cissna's predecessors in both the Bush and Obama administrations were marginally competent political hacks.
Next is the suggestion that Cissna needs to "[f]orce a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the investigative arm of DHS that will require prosecution of immigration fraud". That investigative arm happens to be Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I myself have repeatedly criticized ICE – specifically its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division – for doing everything it can to shirk immigration-related work, and that most certainly includes benefit fraud. But think about that suggestion. Both USCIS and ICE are subordinate agencies within the same Department of Homeland Security. They don't need an MOU. What they need is a DHS secretary who has the intelligence and gumption to recognize the disconnect, and order ICE/HSI to do its job. That this has never happened is evidence of the overall dysfunction of DHS.
https://cis.org/Cadman/Immigration-DHSs-Stepchild
