Biden’s DHS Uses Anti-ICE Activist to Scrutinize Detention of Illegal Immigrants

The Biden administration has appointed an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activist, who is calling for the withdrawal of funding from the agency, to scrutinize the detention of illegal immigrants.

Michelle Brané, who has called ICE’s activities “abusive” and wants to limit the agency’s detention powers, began her tenure earlier this month as immigration detention ombudsman at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Brané has been outspoken in her stance, writing in a 2019 post on

“ICE already receives billions of taxpayer dollars to detain asylum seekers. That’s all they need,” Brané wrote.

When Trump’s ICE director said in 2017 “we shouldn’t wait” for illegal immigrants to commit crimes before deporting them, Brané wrote on X that his comments sounded like those of “a police state to me.”

Brané most recently served as DHS Executive Director for the department’s Family Reunification Task Force.

But given her past statements about ICE enforcement and against detention, former ICE officials believe she is unfit for her current role monitoring such actions.

Read this thread about revised immigration application fees. Giving victims of abuse the most outrageous compensation so they can supplement ICE’s unlawful enforcement. ICE already receives billions in taxpayer money to detain asylum seekers. They don’t need more. https://t.co/7PM318bWSD

— Michelle Brané (@MichelleBrane) November 9, 2019

Many of their findings are consistent with what we do @wrcommission discovered when monitoring detention. ICE cannot conduct detention humanely. It is time to use alternatives and stop using a prison model for civil immigration cases. https://t.co/tA175QSeGO

— Michelle Brané (@MichelleBrane) December 14, 2017

DHS did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Jon Feere, ICE chief of staff during the Trump administration, said Brané’s appointment was akin to “appointing an arsonist responsible for overseeing the US Forest Service.”

“My guess is that she will use her new authority to undermine ICE’s detention efforts, which will come in the form of excessive audits and releases of illegal aliens based on unsubstantiated and false complaints,” Feere said.

ICE has been ordered to conduct more audits and inspected a detention center 92 times last year, the agency’s chief of staff Michael Lumpkin said recently.

“That is ridiculous and certainly not intended to make things function more efficiently. But with an ombudsman who is fundamentally opposed to the mission of ICE and DHS, things will only get worse,” Feere claimed of the audits.

Former ICE field office director John Fabbricatore told The Post that ICE’s decision to tap Brané for the role “raises critical questions about ICE’s direction and priorities under the current administration.”

“Ms. Brane’s past claims that ICE’s efforts to pre-emptively arrest illegal aliens to prevent further crimes amount to a ‘police state’ underscore a problematic perspective for someone about to take on a major position in a law enforcement agency,” said Fabbricatore, who is now running for Congress to represent Colorado’s sixth district, said.

“This is not the first DHS appointment to raise concerns and there appears to be a growing number of activists and advocates of an open-border anti-ICE philosophy.”

The Biden administration has relied heavily on its Alternatives to Detention program, which prevents migrants from being physically detained for extended periods while they await court hearings to hear their asylum claims.

ICE data as of April 6 showed that more than 183,000 migrants were covered by the program through various forms of monitoring, including through ankle or wrist monitors, through telephone check-ins using voice recognition or SmartLINK, where a migrant checks in via a mobile phone app with facial recognition. .

However, the program has recently come under scrutiny for prominent cases of absconding migrants, including Diego Ibarra – an alleged member of the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua and brother of the migrant accused of killing nursing student Laken Riley – and Leonel Moreno , the Venezuelan ‘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 ‘non-criminals,’ they are not eligible for enforcement action,” an ICE official told The Post, referring to a memo the Biden administration issued in September 2021 directing immigration authorities not to track and arrest those who skip the program.

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