The Washington Times:

ICE officers who endorsed President Trump in 2016 now say he has failed to follow through on his get-tough promises, saying catch-and-release of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. is not only still happening, but has gone into “overdrive.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers say they’re being roped into such mundane tasks as opening the doors on vans to release immigrants already caught by Border Patrol agents. That’s dragging the officers from their usual duties of nabbing fugitives, or scouring local prisons and jails for immigrant criminals who lived illegally in the U.S. ready to be deported.

The shell game is all the more “ridiculous,” the officers said, because Border Patrol agents could fill out paperwork and open the doors themselves, but the agency’s leaders don’t want to be part of catch-and-release.

“Hundreds of man hours are wasted each day at a time of crisis on the border,” the leaders of the National ICE Council, the union that represents ICE officers, said in a letter sent directly to Mr. Trump on Monday.

[ … ]

“You frequently speak publicly of the great public safety work ICE is doing under your leadership. To be direct Mr. President — the rhetoric doesn’t match reality and we hope that this letter shows you the complete and total nonsense that is really taking place under the Trump Administration on the southern border,” the ICE officers said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter comes as the situation at the southwestern border has grown out of control for Homeland Security.

Some 160,000 migrant children and family members have been encountered at the border over the last five months, shattering previous records.

Most are arrested by the Border Patrol, though 10-15 percent are encountered by Customs and Border Protection officers trying to come through a border crossing without permission.

Because of the overwhelming numbers, lack of bed space and court rulings, Homeland Security usually processes and quickly releases most of them, with the vain hope that they’ll come back for hearings and eventual deportation.

That’s been dubbed “catch-and-release,” and Mr. Trump took office promising to stop it.

Instead the rate has increased, and it’s spurred the bureaucratic sparring.

Mr. Crane says Border Patrol agents have the power to fill out the release paperwork and to do the releases on their own, but they don’t want to face the embarrassment. So they make ICE officers fill out the release paperwork, and when they drive the immigrants to bus stations to be dropped off, they make an ICE officer actually open the van doors.

Because if Trump ever did intend to do anything about immigration and the border (and he was probably being dishonest about immigration), he intended to wait until after he no longer had the House of Representatives to make it a big deal so that he would be blocked and could make it a re-election issue.

Because he thinks Americans are tools.  By my calculations the only good thing we’ve gotten from Trump is Neil Gorsuch.