The San Francisco area spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resigned Monday, saying he could no longer handle the amount of falsehoods coming from the Trump administration.
San Francisco Division ICE spokesman James Schwab decided to leave because he felt Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Acting ICE Director Tom Homan had mischaracterized the circumstances of illegal immigrants in Oakland, Calif., reports CNN.
“I just couldn’t bear the burden — continuing on as a representative of the agency and charged with upholding integrity, knowing that information was false,” Schwab told CNN.
The Oakland mayor warned illegal immigrants in the area of coming ICE raids, telling residents in February that Oakland police would not be aiding ICE agents in their attempts to detain illegal immigrants. The mayor also said the city would be actively working to thwart any efforts of deportation.
Sessions and the ICE department accused the mayor of allowing 800 dangerous illegal immigrants to roam the city, a number Schwab said was “misleading.”
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“Personally I think her actions were misguided and not responsible. I think she could have had other options. But to blame her for 800 dangerous people out there is just false,” Schwab added. “It’s a false statement because we never pick up 100% of our targets. And to say they’re a type of dangerous criminal is also misleading.”
The DOJ contends that Schwab “doesn’t dispute the number but says: ‘we were not ever going to be able to capture 100 percent of the target list’ of roughly 1,000 undocumented immigrants in Northern California,” according to a statement sent to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
However, Schwab told the San Francisco Chronicle that he quit because he did not want to give a false number to the public.
“I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit,” Schwab said.
ICE said while they disagreed with Schwab’s take on the issue, they wished him well.
“Even one criminal alien on the street can put public safety at risk and as Director Homan stated, while we can’t put a number on how many targets avoided arrest due to the mayor’s warning, it clearly had an impact. While we disagree with Mr. Schwab on this issue, we appreciate his service and wish him well,” the department told TheDCNF in a statement.
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