The new chief attorney for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t have a background in immigration law.
ICE has hired EPA chief of staff Gwen Keyes Fleming as its Principal Legal Advisor, the agency announced Wednesday in an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Immigration-related experience is absent from a list of Fleming’s accomplishments in the email, which was sent to senior ICE officials and DHS General Counsel employees. Fleming majored in finance and got a law degree from Emory University before serving as District Attorney and Solicitor General in Decatur, Georgia, and she’s been at the EPA since 2010.
Employee morale at ICE has plummeted in recent years, and the agency fell to dead last in a 2014 “Best Places to Work” ranking of more than 300 government agency subcomponents.
Officers have expressed frustration with the Obama administration for implementing immigration policies that make their jobs more difficult, and this week in San Diego the ICE employees protested alleged racism and sexual abuse in the agency.
“Yes, working for this agency is hell right now,” one officer told the Washington Examiner in November.
DHS Sec. Jeh Johnson told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday he doesn’t know who heads the Citizenship and Immigration Services union.
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