Things are not improving at ICE SVU, now even the Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has two major components, ICE Special Victims Unit (SVU), more formally known as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is failing to support deportations. ICE SVU does not want to do immigration work and at every opportunity wants to differentiate itself from ERO. This was the basis of the insubordination by the Dirty 19 who wanted to get ICE SVU out of ICE.

That contempt for President Trump and his immigration enforcement policy was on display again by ICE SVU management. Strangely, it was Matthew Albence who is a veteran of the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and should know better than to associate himself with the legacy U.S. Customs Service (USCS) insubordination and contempt for President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.

In October, ICE officials moved an investigative unit – Homeland Security Investigations – from the office on Gannett Drive to the fourth floor of One City Center in downtown Portland, [NB: Portland, Maine] sparking protests outside the downtown location. In January, protesters projected the message “EVICT ICE” onto the side of the building and set up a cage made of fencing outside.

The protests drew the attention of acting ICE Director Matthew Albence, who flew to Portland for a day last month where he met with media and rejected the protesters’ narrative.

In an interview with the Portland Press Herald, he refuted the notion that Homeland Security Investigations staff has anything to do with removing illegal immigrants from the United States. HSI focuses on human trafficking, weapons smuggling and other security-related issues, he said. And in a Jan. 16 op-ed published in the Press Herald, Albence called out the protesters and said they were essentially advocating for criminals to remain free.

[ICE Immigration Operations Moving To Scarborough Office, by Matt Byrne, Portland Press-Herald, February 14, 2020]

So, ICE SVU has nothing to do with removing illegal aliens? ICE SVU is supposed to identify and arrest illegal aliens in the United States who smuggle other aliens, work illegally, commit benefit fraud, and other crimes. Is that nothing to do with removing illegal aliens? Note also that Albence did not mention work-site enforcement as something that ICE SVU is supposed to do.

Back Stabber Matthew Albence

It appears that Albence has drunk the Customs puke Kool-Aid. Why is he still there? It is another in the long-standing problem the Trump Administration has with appointees betraying the President. Hopefully Ken The Knife with take Albence to the woodshed for denigrating ICE ERO. Sadly, this confirms the fact that ICE SVU is not with the program; why did ICE ERO have to call for Border Patrol support recently? Because ICE SVU are back stabbing betrayers of the ICE mission.

Also of note, it appears that Clifford Trott of the Portland, Maine, Veterans Administration does not like ICE ERO as well. Why would he even have an opinion about locating ICE ERO with a VA office?

Housing the law enforcement group in the same building as the veteran’s support and counseling center proved vexing for the veteran’s group’s executive director, Clifford Trott. When asked whether Trott believed the Vet Center’s move to Scarborough was in the best interest of the organization, he deferred to a Veteran’s Administration spokeswoman.

“I’m mixed, how’s that?” Trott said, and declined to elaborate on his reasoning. “I’ll let the public affairs person talk about that.”

Neither Trott nor a VA spokeswoman, Jessica Schiefer, responded to multiple requests for an interview in recent weeks, and they did not offer responses to a list of eight questions about the move and the co-location with ICE.

But in an email obtained by the Press Herald, Trott was more candid about his preference that the Vet Center not share a location with the law enforcement agency.

“I am very eager to relocate, as you know,” Trott wrote to Alisha Wofford, an employee with the U.S. General Services Administration, which coordinates logistics for federal offices, including buying and leasing properties that house agencies. “However, it needs to be the right location. In my opinion, this is not that site.”

It sounds like the Deep State is entrenched in the VA as well. He thinks ICE ERO, his fellow Federal employees are some sort of untouchables who will ritually contaminate him and other VA employees.

Clifford Trott, Hater Of ICE Officers

You can reach Trott here: (207) 780-3584 and ask him why he objects to working next to immigration officers You can also contact Trott’s boss here, Ryan Lilly, Network Director, New England VA, (781) 687-4821.