Joe’s ICE melter
Anti-agency activist tasked with audits
The Biden administration has appointed an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement activist, who advocates pulling funding from the agency, to scrutinize the detention of migrants.
Michelle Brané, who has called ICE’s activities “abusive,” began her tenure earlier this month as the immigration detention ombudsman at the Department of Homeland Security.
Brané has been outspoken in her stance, writing in one 2019 post on X that fees for immigration applications are used to “supplement ICE’s abusive enforcement.”
“ICE already gets billions of taxpayer money to detain asylumseekers. They do not need more,” Brané wrote.
When Donald Trump’s ICE director said in 2017 that “we shouldn’t wait” for migrants to commit crimes in order to deport them, Brané wrote on X his comments sound like those of “a police state to me.”
Brané most recently served as executive director for DHS’ Family Reunification Task Force.
But given her previous statements, former ICE officials believe she’s unfit for her current role of auditing the agency’s enforcement and detention.
Jon Feere, who was ICE chief of staff during the Trump administration, said Brané’s appointment is akin to “putting an arsonist in charge of conducting oversight of the US Forest Service.”
“My guess is that she’ll use her new authority to undermine ICE detention efforts, which will come in the form of excessive audits and releases of illegal aliens based on unsupported and phony complaints,” Feere told The Post.
“That’s ridiculous and certainly not intended to make things function more efficiently. But with an ombudsman who fundamentally opposes ICE’s and DHS’ mission, things will only get worse,” Feere claimed of the audits.
DHS didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment.
‘Open-border’ attitude
Former ICE field office director John Fabbricatore said the decision to tap Brané for the role “raises critical questions about the direction and priorities of ICE under the current administration.”
“Ms. Brane’s previous assertions that efforts by ICE to preemptively arrest illegal aliens to prevent further crimes equate to a ‘police state’ underscores a problematic perspective for someone about to hold a significant position in a law enforcement agency,” Fabbricatore, who’s running for Congress in Colorado, told The Post.
“There seems to be a growing number of . . . advocates of an open-border, anti-ICE philosophy.”
The Biden administration has heavily relied on its “Alternatives to Detention” program, which keeps migrants from being physically detained for long periods of time as they await court dates.
ICE data from April 6 showed more than 183,000 migrants were released into the US under the program and being monitored
through such means as ankle or wrist devices and phone check-ins in which their identities are verified by voice or face recognition.
The program has faced scrutiny over prominent absconders, such as Diego Ibarra — an alleged member of the gang Tren De Aragua whose brother is charged with murdering nursing student Laken Riley — and Leonel Moreno, the
“migrant influencer” who urged others to “invade” the US and squat in citizens’ homes.
“We have so many [absconders], and since the majority of them are ‘noncriminals,’ they don’t qualify for enforcement action,” an ICE official told The Post, referring to a 2021 White House directive not to track down and arrest those who skip out on the program.