Headline of the Day

Looks Like A Police State To Me, Says Federal Judge Handling Migrant Detention Cases

—Techdirt, quoting Judge Sanket Bulsara of the Eastern District of New York.

Money quote:

And that leads to the judge comparing ICE’s actions to those of a police state: 

This practice of after-the-fact arrest warrants can be called many things—illegal, improper, and unconstitutional, among them. But whatever label one wishes to apply, the practice is fundamentally at odds with and offensive to lawful, constitutional behavior in this country. “An arrest is not justified by what the subsequent search discloses[.]” A contrary rule—the one that the USAO here defends by backing detention and opposing release—“would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law.” 

Police and law enforcement cannot operate as roving bands, detaining individuals, figuring out the reasons later, and papering over their failures afterwards. This sadly is the practice in many other parts of the world. But in the United States, the law prohibits such conduct.

(Emphasis original) 

Everyone involved at any level in these actions should be barred from law enforcement and the legal profession for the rest of their life.

 

A Small Win

The DHS funding bill finally passed both houses without funding ICE or the Border Patrol.

Johnson said no funding bill without funding those two agencies, but he blinked. 

The House on Thursday passed stalled legislation reopening the Department of Homeland Security, ending a record 76-day shutdown at the agency and resolving uncertainty over whether thousands of federal security workers would be paid in May.

The voice vote after a brief debate brought to a close a bitter partisan fight spurred by President Trump’s immigration crackdown and the tactics of federal immigration officers who fatally shot two U.S. citizens during immigration roundups in Minneapolis earlier this year. Negotiations between the White House and Democrats who were demanding new restrictions on the officers went nowhere, leading to an impasse that cut off funding on Feb. 14. 

………

Senate Republicans and Democrats had struck a deal on April 1 to fund everything except for the immigration enforcement agencies, vowing to approve that money separately in a bill that Democrats could not block. But the House G.O.P. declined for weeks to act on the measure, with conservatives refusing to vote for a bill that did not fund ICE and border patrol.

House leaders finally took it up on Thursday ahead of a 12-day break, and after the White House requested that the bill be passed immediately.

The bullies blinked. 

 

So Much for Judicial Independence

The Trump administration just fired a number of immigration judges after they followed the law when making their decisions.

That seems just a little bit ……… Fascist.

It's certainly an explicit attempt to intimidate judges into breaking the law. 

The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against international students who had advocated for Palestinians.

The firings of the judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, marked the latest efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the country’s immigration courts.

The administration has dismissed dozens of immigration judges and, according to those on the bench, has put judges under pressure to deny asylum claims and order deportations. Unlike federal judges in the independent judicial branch, immigration judges work for the Justice Department and are hired and fired by the attorney general.

The two judges, who were terminated alongside four colleagues on Friday, oversaw two high-profile cases filed by the government against the students, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi.

 If there is an election in 2028, and if the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) doesn't shoot itself in the foot again, every one of these bastards, from Trump, to Miller, to Bondi, to Blanche, to Rubio need to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

From the Department of, "About F%$#ing Time"

This picture should refresh your memoryThe Ramsey County Minnesota District Attorney and Sheriff are investigating the detention of ChongLy “Scott” Thao by ICE as a possible kidnapping.

Thao, a US citizen, was dragged out of his house wearing a pair of shorts and Crocs by ICE agents after they broke down his door.

It was all without a warrant.

Ramsey County is investigating the January arrest of a St. Paul Hmong American man by federal immigration officers as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials announced Monday. 

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher said at a news conference they will pursue information from the Department of Homeland Security that they need for their investigation into the arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao on Jan. 18, calling it a violation of the U.S. Constitution to forcibly remove Thao without probable cause.

………

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers bashed open the front door of Thao’s East Side home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him outside half-dressed in freezing conditions.

………

Thao later told the Associated Press that his daughter-in-law alerted him that ICE agents were banging at the door. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled.

“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.”

Thao, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Hmong elder, was quickly handcuffed and was seen on video being led outside bare-chested in freezing temperatures, wearing nothing but Crocs, boxer shorts and a children’s blanket. A photo of the incident drew immediate attention on social media.

 Throw the book at them.

Now Start Kicking Down Doors and Hauling Them Off to Prison

You may not have heard the story of Nurul Amin Shah Alam.

He was a refugee from from Myanmar, a Rohinga.  He is also blind and spoke very little English.

He was arrested in what was clearly a case of over aggressive policing, and spent much of the next year in jail.

His family would not bail him out because they believed that he would be seized by immigration officers and deported.

He was released following a plea deal which included no deportable offenses, but CBP seized him in response to a no longer in force detainer, and then they promptly dumped him in the parking lot of a closed coffee sErie County Medical Examiner has now ruled his death a homicide.

On Wednesday, the Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office announced that it ruled the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Blind Rohingya refugee who was left on the freezing streets of Buffalo by Border Patrol officers, a homicide. Neither Shah Alam’s family, who had waited to meet him outside the facility where he was being held, nor his lawyers, who had been attempting to contact him, were notified of his location. Shah Alam spoke very little English.

The Associated Press reported that the medical examiner’s office did not “reach any conclusions about responsibility” for the homicide and that Shah Alam’s death was “caused by complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer, precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration. “

“The designation of homicide does not imply intent to cause harm or death,” Erie County official Mark Poloncarz said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Manner-of-death determinations are neutral, non-legal, and exist for vital statistical purposes only. They do not indicate criminality, which is the purview of the justice system.”………

The Department of Homeland Security claimed on X that Shah Alam “showed no signs of distress, mobility issues, or disabilities requiring special assistance,” despite being blind and experiencing other health issues. “DHS is lying,” New York Democrat and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded in a quote post.

Poloncarz said that he has spoken to Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane and New York Attorney General Letitia James about the case, and he encouraged questions about criminal investigations to be directed to them.

The CBP officers involved with this, including supervisors who knew, or should have known, about this should be in custody right now.

I want to see COPS style footage of them being frog marched out of their homes in their underwear. 

Bringing Jobs Back to America

Or not.

Because of concerns about threats to travelers to the United States by immigration authorities, the Ig Nobel Prize will be moving its awards ceremony to Europe.

Honestly, I understand the need to relocate to a safer place than the United States.

It could have been Europe, it could have been Japan, it could have been Karg Island, or it could have been Chernobyl. They would all be safer for people going through US customs.

The annual Ig Nobels, a satirical award for scientific achievement, are shifting for the first time from the US to Europe due to concerns about attendees getting visas, organizers announced on Monday.

Organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think, the 36th annual ceremony will be held in Zurich. It’s usually held in the US in September, a few weeks before the actual Nobel prizes are announced.

“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, told the Associated Press in an email interview. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year.”

The move comes amid Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration, in which he has focused on deporting migrants illegally in the US, as well as holders of student and visitor exchange visas.

………

But four of the 10 winners last year chose not to travel to Boston for the ceremony. In previous years, the ceremony has taken place at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University.

I think that someone should publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal about this.  You might even get an Ig Nobel Prize for that.

 

………Which Would Be Replaced by Something Even More Bizarrely Inexplicable

I am referring, of course, to the fact that Markwayne Mullin has been confirmed as the new Secretary of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi "Ice Barbi" Noem.

I did not think that it would possible to find someone worse than Noem.

I was misinformed.

The Senate confirmed Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Monday to serve as the next secretary of Homeland Security, putting the Oklahoma Republican in charge of immigration enforcement, one of President Trump's biggest priorities in his second term.

Mullin won the confirmation in a 54-45 vote. He will be the second secretary to lead the department during this Trump administration, replacing Kristi Noem. He comes to the helm in the midst of a shutdown that has left 100,000 of the department's more than a quarter-million employees working without pay.

Reality exceeds my capability for cynicism yet again. 

It Gets Worse

It turns out that staff at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas were running a betting pool on which detainees would commit suicide.

Yes, I think that we can call them concentration camps now. 

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

Owen Ramsingh, a legal permanent resident who spent several weeks at the Camp East Montana detention facility in Texas, told AP that he overheard a security guard talking about a betting pool for which detainee would next die by suicide. The guard said he had paid $500 into the pot, which would all go to the winner with the most accurate predictions on detainees harming themselves.

Without providing details, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told AP that Ramsingh, who was brought to the US at age 5 from the Netherlands, was lying about the suicide bets.

In January, staff at Camp East Montana called 911 to request emergency help for Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old from Cuba. DHS described his death as an attempted suicide. A medical examiner later ruled it a homicide. That same month, staff at the detention facility called 911 to report that a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man died by suicide. The AP reports that “detainees attempted to harm themselves while expressing suicidal ideations on at least six other occasions that resulted in 911 calls.”

Once the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, Camp East Montana is made up of six long tents at the Fort Bliss Army base outside of El Paso. On an average day, the facility holds around 3,000 detainees who are living in harsh conditions: They lack sufficient food and often go without proper medical care, according to AP’s review of 130 calls made to 911. Those calls took place in just about five months—from when the tents were quickly constructed in mid-August to January 20.

The cruelty is the point.

Replaced by Something Even More Bizarrely Inexplicable

So, amid cratering poll numbers, Donald Trump has fired Kristi Noem as head of DHS and replaced her with the stupidest man in the Senate Markwayne Mullin.

There are any number of reasons for this, such as her persistent self dealing and her lying to the Senate about this under oath, or her $¼ billion PR program which primarily consisted of glamor shots of herself, or it could be that she said that Trump had approved her advertising excesses.

Mostly, I think that it's because she got caught, so Trump took her to the gravel pit along with her (alleged) adulterous "Special Advisor" Corey Lewandowski.

Her erstwhile successor mind mindbogglingly stupid, even by the standards of MAGA, which is saying a lot.

Margaret Atwood Must Be Weeping

In a move that highlights the inhumanity of the Trump administration, immigration authorities are moving detained girls to Texas to force them to have their babies.

This includes many rape victims. 

These people need to be permanently removed from anything resembling a position of power.

All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.

As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.

Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.

Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.

 When the worm turns, the need to be taken down.  To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of They cannot be reasoned with.  To quote Robert Graves apocryphal quote of Germanicus Caesar, "They must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them." 

 

We Live in the Worst Timeline Ever

Fascist Kink Roleplay Subreddit Draws the Line: No More ICE Porn

—404 Media (Alternative link at archive.is) On how reality became too awful for a Reddit kink forum.

This buggers the mind.

In the wake of the public killings of multiple US citizens, protestors, and legal observers in recent weeks by immigration agents in Minneapolis, January 26, 2025 marked a watershed moment for r/FuckingFascists: they will no longer allow content or roleplay featuring ICE. 

The Reddit community r/FuckingFascists is for people with a kink for roleplaying sex with fascists. The subreddit’s description explicitly states that the sub is “about making porn or making fun of authoritarians. REAL FASCISTS, SEXISTS, HOMOPHOBES, TRANSPHOBES AND OTHER BIGOTS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!,” and “Rule 1: No Fascists”. 

On Monday morning, moderator LilyDHM announced a complete ban of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) content in the sub. “No ICE related content will be allowed in kink posts,” the post reads. “We believe that this is the best option to allow people to still post MAGA content without touching this particular aspect of it, as it directly involves current politics and multiple lost lives.”

 

 

I Went to the Farmers Market Today

 And I picked up a button. 

About El Paso

It turns out that the 10 day (rescinded after a few hours) airspace shut-down over El Paso was a party balloon, not any real sort of security threat.

Don't worry though, they shot it down with a laser. 

The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.

The episode led the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was quickly lifted Wednesday morning at the direction of the White House.

Top administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that required a military response, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralized.”

But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the F.A.A.’s extreme move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without coordination with the F.A.A. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defense Department officials were present during the incident, one person said. 

I'm going to give these incompetent idiots the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that it was one of the shiny silver Mylar balloons, which, because of their aluminum coating, are readily picked up on radar.

The level of incompetence here is stunning. 

 

Well Played, The Nation, Well Played

That journal of progressive politics has announced that they are nominating the city of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize| The Nation.

You have to appreciate the quality of the trolling that they are throwing at Donald Trump here. 

The editors of The Nation magazine are in the process of formally nominating the city of Minneapolis and its people for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. The following nomination statement, which is addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the five-member body that is charged by the Parliament of Norway with selecting the recipient of the Peace Prize, has been prepared for submission on Friday.

TO: The distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee

As longtime observers of struggles to establish peace and justice in the United States and around the world, and as the editors of a magazine that is proud to have included several Nobel laureates on our editorial board and masthead—including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—we are honored to nominate the city of Minneapolis and its people for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.

While individuals and organizations have been granted this prize since its inception in 1901, no municipality has ever been recognized. But, in these unprecedented times, we strongly believe that the case can be made that Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota, has met and exceeded the committee’s standard of promoting “democracy and human rights, and work aimed at creating a better organized and more peaceful world.”

In December 2025, President Donald Trump and his administration deployed thousands of armed and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement and United States Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis, a beautifully multiracial and multiethnic city of nearly 430,000 people. These agents have targeted the city’s diverse immigrant communities and struck fear into all of its residents. As Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in late January, the campaign has been “more about tragically terrorizing people than it is about safety” and has been guilty of “discriminating only on the basis of race.”

The people of Minneapolis have suffered countless abuses, including harassment, detention, deportation, and injury. And, in incidents that shocked the world, federal agents have killed multiple residents, including poet and mother of three Renee Nicole Good and intensive care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti.

In response to these horrific developments, elected officials, clergy, and labor leaders in Minneapolis and Minnesota have called for nonviolent protest, in accordance with the US Constitution’s promise that Americans have a right to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances. The people of Minneapolis and neighboring communities have answered that call with peaceful mass demonstrations that have drawn tens of thousands of protesters to the streets in frigid weather. They have coupled their cry for federal agents to withdraw from Minneapolis with chants that declare, “No hate, no fear… immigrants are welcome here!”

The people of Minneapolis have also engaged in mutual support and care for neighbors who have been targeted because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. They have delivered groceries to residents who are afraid to leave their homes and provided financial support to neighbors who haven’t been able to go to their places of work because of the federal assault on their rights and humanity. 

(emphasis original)

You can read the rest at the link.

According to Snopes, the submitter was made, and it met all the requirements for an official nomination, and was accepted by the committee.

If they get it, Trump's head will explode.

Today in Good Governance

The Minneapolis City Council has decided to postpone the issuance of liquor licenses to the Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel for a month in order to get public comment.

In case you are wondering, these are hotels loaded to the gills with ICE and CBP agents, so I rather expect that they will be getting a LOT of public comment on this.

A Minneapolis City Council committee delayed action Tuesday on renewing liquor licenses for two Minneapolis hotels that have housed federal immigration officers.

The committee, made up of all the council members, voted 8-5 to delay a decision on the licenses for Canopy by Hilton in the Mill District and Depot Renaissance Hotel until the next meeting on Feb. 17. The council also voted to schedule a public hearing so residents can weigh in on the matter.

The hotels have been the targets of protests because federal agents were believed to be staying in them during the immigration enforcement surge that has brought 3,000 of them to the state. Two days after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in south Minneapolis, about a thousand people converged outside the two hotels, blowing whistles and banging drums to disrupt agents’ rest.

The move to delay action on the liquor licenses was controversial, with some council members saying denying the licenses would set the city up to be sued and lose. Representatives of the hotels were not immediately available to respond to a request for comment.

Committee Chair Aurin Chowdhury said she felt it was important for the council to have more discussion of the licenses and give the public the chance to share their stories, noting her sister lives on the University of Minnesota campus near two hotels that have housed federal agents, disrupting the lives of neighbors.

………

Council President Elliott Payne said it’s fairly routine for the council to evaluate whether there should be conditions added to licenses. He said the council is holding the renewal so it can have a “fact-based conversation.”

Here's a potential condition, no booze for anyone who carries a gun as a part of their job, like ICE and CBP agents.  They need a clear head. 

How Scary are the MAGAts?

So scary that it scares sovereign citizen nut-job Ammon Bundy.

Not so long ago, Ammon Bundy was the most famous right-wing militia leader in America. His two armed standoffs with federal agents had made him the face of the Patriot Movement: a loose assemblage of anti-government extremists, Second Amendment maximalists, and more than a few white nationalists. Even some mainstream elements of the Republican Party embraced him as a modern folk hero. But Bundy’s criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown now threatens to make him a pariah within his own community.

In November, Bundy self-published a long essay titled “The Stranger,” in which he labeled the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants a “moral failure.” “To call such people criminals for lacking official permission” to be in the country, he wrote, “is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice.” On a recent livestream following the killing of Renee Good in Minnesota, Bundy told his audience that ICE’s conduct “clearly looks like tyranny.” If the government threatened his family, he said, he would fight back by whatever means necessary.

I did not have that on my bingo card. 

We Have Names

The two CBP agents who shot Alex Pretti in the back were Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez.

Spread their names around:

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations.

Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city.

CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good.

Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity.

………

Ochoa is a Border Patrol agent who joined CBP in 2018. Gutierrez joined in 2014 and works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units. Records show both men are from South Texas. 

This information should have been made public by DHS, and ProPublica has done a real public service and some really good journalism.

I Like Bruce Springsteen, and I Like Bob Dylan

But I am profoundly unimpressed by Springsteen's latest, a protest song about ICE, where he seems to trying to sound as much like Bob Dylan as possible. 

I appreciate the sentiment, but Bruce Springsteen can do a protest song in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Hell, Bruce Springsteen could do a song from his shopping list in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Too Toxic for Other Republicans

A candidate for the Republican nomination for Minnesota Governor has dropped out of the race, basically saying that the party has become too toxic for him to even bother.

A top Republican candidate for Minnesota governor has dropped out of the race, sharply criticizing what he called a “federal retribution on the citizens of our state” amid the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement operations – which sparked public outrage after US agents’ killings ofAlex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

On Monday, the Minneapolis-based attorney Chris Madel made his announcement, saying in a video online: “I cannot support the … stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

………

Madel had launched his gubernatorial bid in December and provided legal counsel to the ICE agent Jonathan Ross after he shot Good to death on 7 January while she drove away from an encounter with him.

His withdrawal comes as some Republicans in Minnesota and Washington have begun to distance themselves from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Madel said ICE’s Operation Metro Surge would hurt Republicans statewide after large street protests met the killings of Pretti and Good, along with widespread criticism beyond Minneapolis.

“National Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota,” he said.

Note what he is saying here.  Heis main point is not that it's wrong, it is complaining that it makes getting a Republican elected in Minnesota almost impossible. 

Snark of the Day

Finally, someone has an ICE reeducation program that might work.

As my reader(s) are aware, I'm generally not in favor of training to change organizational culture, but this suggestion seems to be to be eminently reasonable while also having a good chance of success.

………

I propose a sort of long-term residential program for everyone who remains with ICE and CBP after this week, along with more or less everyone hired since the start of the second Trump administration. This would have to be a mandatory program, reflecting the seriousness with which we ought to take proper law enforcement training in this country.

Obviously, ICE agents will not be able to continue working while they are undergoing this rigorous new training program. And in order for retraining to be effective, it will take a long time—perhaps even years. Because we can’t accept one-size-fits-all solutions, we should expect this mandatory residential retraining program to be somewhat open-ended. I would recommend we place these agents on an indefinite leave of absence from their jobs while they are retraining, and have their essential duties taken over by other agencies, preferably outside the Department of Homeland Security (which will have a lot of its agents undergoing this long-term residential training).

This will not be a cheap program, admittedly. Fortunately the immigration enforcement agencies are currently funded at extremely high levels, and Democrats have already shown a reluctance to clawing back that money, out of fear of being labeled soft on crime. But what could be more pro-law enforcement than additional training? And as the Trump administration has decisively shown, using appropriated money for its official purpose is more of a “suggestion” than a requirement of our constitutional system, so a future administration can repurpose that funding for this new mandatory long-term residential training program.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this recommendation is is worthy of comparison to the proposals of Jonathan Swift back in the day.

H/t Atrios