ICE Agents Are Desperate to Quit Under Stephen Miller’s Regime

Federal immigration officials are looking for their own path away from the Trump administration.

Veronica Cardenas, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutor, told MSNBC Sunday that many ICE agents are “unhappy” and experiencing “very low” morale.

“I have been contacted by people on the inside, stating, ‘How did you leave?’ and ‘What process did that take?’” Cardenas said.

“Even at the time that I left, people were, number one, surprised—because when you join the government, people believe that there’s this sort of trajectory to it. When you leave, it does catch people off guard,” she continued. “I think people are going through that struggle, and what I would say to them is that your voice has so much power. You don’t have to do things that are unjust or wrong. Believe in yourself, step out of that.”

Although President Donald Trump has heaped endless praise on the federal deportation agency, ICE agents have reportedly never been so miserable, forced to primarily detain noncriminal immigrants in order to meet their quota of 3,000 arrests per day, per White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s demands.

Speaking to her own experience exiting the agency, Cardenas said that taking the jump to leave boils down to a “moral conflict.”

“We all take oaths, right? When we step into that job, we are taking an oath to protect the Constitution and to follow the rule of law,” Cardenas told MSNBC. “And then when you get into that space, and you’re looking at these decisions that are being made, and the way that they’re being made: people are being harmed, people are dying in ICE detention, in custody.”

“You have this conflict with yourself: ‘These laws cannot be right, and I don’t want to enforce it anymore,’” Cardenas told the network. The former assistant chief counsel then underscored that institutional change against America’s immigration is “not coming from the inside,” but the outside.