DHS enlists anti-ICE immigration detention official who doesn’t want illegal migrants behind bars
The Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security recently enlisted Michelle Brané to serve as the agency’s immigration detention ombudsman, according to a Wednesday announcement from the DHS.
Brané previously served as the executive director for the department’s Family Reunification Task Force and has been an outspoken critic of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In several posts on X, Brané accused ICE of using “abusive enforcement.”
“ICE already gets billions of taxpayer money to detain asylum seekers,” she wrote in 2019. “They do not need more.”
In another post from 2017, Brané stated that the agency “can not implement detention humanely.”
“Time to use alternatives and stop using a prison model for civil immigration cases,” she declared.
Former ICE acting Director Thomas Homan previously stated, “If we wait for [non-criminal undocumented immigrants] to violate yet another law against a citizen of this country, then it’s too late. We shouldn’t wait for them to become a criminal.”
Brané responded to Homan’s comments by writing on X, “Sounds like a police state to me.”
She repeatedly slammed the Trump administration, claiming the former president’s DHS separated migrant children from their parents.
“Yet again – the cruelty of this administration and border policies that punish those seeking protection is shocking. Separating newborns from their mother and lying about hospital policy,” Brané said in 2020.
In her new position with the DHS, Brané will be responsible for scrutinizing ICE’s detention of illegal migrants.
Jon Feere, director of investigations with the Center for Immigration Studies and former ICE chief of staff under the Trump administration, told the New York Post that tapping Brané for the position is like “putting an arsonist in charge of conducting oversight of the U.S. 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 said.
John Fabbricatore, a former ICE field office director, told the Post that the DHS’ decision to appoint Brané “raises critical questions about the direction and priorities of ICE under the current administration.”
“Ms. Brane’s previous assertions that efforts by ICE to pre-emptively 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 said.
The DHS did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
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