The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security, posted a #tbt tweet today, and it’s a jaw-dropper.
#TBT April 2012: ICE arrests more than 3,100 convicted criminal aliens & immigration fugitives in nationwide ophttps://t.co/Khqlk6WGBq pic.twitter.com/t0unWHpe8J
— ICE (@ICEgov) February 16, 2017
The photo in question is a throwback to a six-day raid in 2012 that led to 3,100 arrests of immigrants, 1,477 of which already had felony convictions. While you could argue ICE is just proud of the job it’s done—which according to its website includes enforcing immigration laws “in a fair and effective manner” and detaining “individuals when necessary”—others are questioning the timing of the tweet. Today is the national “Day Without Immigrants” strike, in which immigrants—many of whom are legally in this country or are on legal paths to citizenship—have walked out of work in protest of Donald Trump’s “crackdown” on undocumented immigrants. This includes the more than 680 arrests of immigrants made by ICE agents last weekend.
Many are pointing out the insensitivity of the message on Twitter.
Screenshot via ICE/Twitter
Twitter eggs following the ICE, on the other hand, encouraged the agency to keep up the good work.
ICE/Twitter
Maybe next Thursday we can throwback to a simpler time, like 2001, when government entities didn’t do so much of their communication via social media.