by Robert M. Traxler
Congressional staffers not being allowed in ICE facilities because of their past conduct to folks working in broader holding facilities was covered a few weeks ago in the media as an outrage. The staffers were predominately from “The Squad,” a group of uber-liberal United States Representatives who had predetermined the ICE folks were Waffen Schutzstaffel (SS) operating death camps on our southern border, in the same manner the armed National Socialists (SS) did in Eastern Europe during World War II.
The staffers had been discourteous and even abusive to the ICE personnel in past visits, and the leadership of ICE had had enough. Let me tell you a story one of many concerning my sentence in Washington D.C. In my opinion, no real soldier wants to be immersed in the swamp that is the District of Columbia, so I refer to it as a sentence rather than an assignment.
Flying back to Washington from the International Association of Chiefs of Police Convention in St. Louis, Mo., we were on a commercial flight with John Bayard Anderson and staff. Mr. Anderson was a United States politician from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois’s 16th congressional district from 1961 to 1981. At this time, he was running as an Independent candidate for President. He lost to President Regan and for a time was a darling of the left.
Mr. Anderson was in first class, while the media folks and his staffers were in the back with us minions. The flight attendants had a bit of a problem getting the Anderson staffers to take their seats for takeoff from Lambert international. They had to ask these folks to take their seats a few times, being more blunt each time, and they made insulting remarks to the flight attendants, however, eventually sitting.
During the flight the Anderson folks who displayed buttons or badges attesting to their status as self-appointed very important persons were obnoxious and downright rude to the flight crew and other passengers; I am sure you have witnessed these kinds of folks on flights.
As we descended to land at Washington National (the name had not yet been changed to Reagan National), the Anderson people were standing in the aisle and walking about the cabin. The flight crew asked them to take their seats for landing and were ignored. They asked a few times more with the same results. Witnessing the discourteous and downright childish behavior, I stood up to express my anger. The full Colonel I was traveling with, our public affairs officer, grabbed my arm and told me to sit down. As a trained media professional, he knew in 1980 a military officer would be eaten alive in the media for any physical or verbal contact with staffers, especially from a liberal’s ampaign.
The pilot came into the cabin and announced he had two hours of fuel on board and he would burn every drop of it unless everyone took their seats. The childish, self-appointed very important people finally took their seats. After landing, to prove how important they were, they stood up long before the aircraft stopped at the gate and stayed standing after the flight crew asked them to remain seated.
The point is that congressional staffers can be full of themselves and downright rude. The ICE employees knew that they were not allowed to defend themselves against abuse by House of Representatives employees. The leadership of ICE was totally correct in denying access to these rude, crude and socially unacceptable folks.
A military unit takes on the personality of the commander, and a congressional staff takes on the personality of the Congress person. The Squad referred to ICE as Nazis who tortured women and children, so are we surprised by their staff’s conduct towards low level ICE employees? Not one bit. Bravo to the ICE leadership for standing up to these self-important, full of themselves babies.
It is sad that the media only tells one side of the story; most reports never mentioned the reason for denying access, only that it was denied. Members of “The Squad” cited the incident as “proof” ICE had something to hide.
