ICE agent morale is plummeting over their long hours, quotas they’re required to meet, and public hatred, according to reporting by The Independent. Even agents who support the Trump administration’s goals are “disillusioned” with their leadership’s tactics, the report claimed.
Well boo-freaking-hoo. Finally, some ICE agents are rediscovering their ethics.
Many Americans are fed up with ICE, and hundreds of SLO County residents gathered to protest outside of and then attend the SLO County Board of Supervisors’ Jan. 27 marathon forum to comply with California’s Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds (TRUTH) Act that requires the local governing body to hold an annual forum if local law enforcement allows ICE access to people in their custody.
In case you’re wondering, Sheriff Ian Parkinson turned over 69 people to ICE in 2025, up from just one in 2024. Of course, Parkinson had his reasons.
“I went to the border with other sheriffs and saw pretty much what was occurring,” Parkison said. “To me, in 2024, it made zero sense to be turning people over even if they had a prior conviction because they’d turn around and come right back in. Second problem was purely that ICE was nowhere to be found. To the most part, they were deployed down at the border and with their hands tied and doing almost zero enforcement.”
Take that, Sleepy Joe! It only makes sense to comply with ICE under the Trump administration because it closed the border tighter than the Epstein files and untied ICE agents’ hands and filled them with pepper spray and guns. ’Merica!
“The border was secured, and I didn’t have to deal with the fact that it was a useless exercise to send somebody and come back out,” Parkinson claimed. “Second, it was ICE’s ability to come pick up people.”
That sounds like political talk to me, sheriff!
OK, State of the Union, anyone? We’ve got masked, militarized ICE agents in American cities who are attacking Americans exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech, protest, assembly, and observing and filming law enforcement in public places. Citizens are being assaulted, sprayed with chemical agents, and murdered. And the Trump administration is gaslighting the American people by telling us the protesters are terrorists out to kill law enforcement. Who you gonna believe? President Orange Dick-tator and his sycophant minions or your lying eyes?
It’s sickening and scary. No wonder so many people showed up to give the supervisors and Parkinson an earful. Four hours of public comment!
Part of Parkinson’s questioning included a highly publicized interaction in December between ICE agents and protesters in the Sheriff’s Office lobby when agents arrived to snatch up an about-to-be-released inmate. According to Parkinson, agents “penetrated” a sally port door between the lobby and the jail to arrest the inmate, who retreated back into the jail.
When Parkinson contacted the Santa Maria ICE facility to question why its agents forced their way in, ICE provided a video of with protesters being really mean to them and flipping them off and telling them, “Fuck you,” so ICE decided to barrel right into the secure facility.
Isn’t that the way law enforcement is supposed to operate?
Or is that why the public no longer trusts ICE?
“The immigration actions that I see around our country right now disturb and disgust me,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson said. “The anger about that that we’ve heard expressed … is my anger. That anger directed at ICE and the leadership that controls ICE is deserved and righteous.”
Protesters are calling for ICE-free zones, but fat chance that will fly with our MAGA District Attorney Dan Dow, whose office said in a statement, “We have also received questions regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the concept of so-called ‘ICE-free zones.’ It is important for the public to understand that federal law applies nationwide under the U.S. Constitution, and local or state governments do not have the authority to prohibit lawful federal enforcement activities.”
Well shit, somebody better tell cannabis dispensaries they can still be raided by the feds! Everyone loves “states’ rights” until they inconveniently interfere with their ideology.
As Gibson told New Times, “Our DA’s comments about this are typical and expected: In trying to curry favor with his MAGA base, he has regularly dismissed and diminished efforts to support a robust local response. He is, as always, first and foremost a political partisan.”
The good news is some small fissures are beginning to appear in the right-wing hegemony. Even a conservative stalwart like 1st District Supervisor John Peschong was wobbling on the party line. Don’t get me wrong. He still thinks deporting undocumented immigrants is fine and dandy, but of deported people’s children, he actually said, “These are American citizens according to the United States Constitution. I think we owe it to them to be able to figure out a way to take care of them through our social service programs here in San Luis Obispo County.”
What the what? You’re suddenly pro social safety net? And for people who many in your camp would call “anchor babies”? The world is topsy-turvy. ∆
The Shredder likes ice in tea, not the community. Add sugar at shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 5, 2026.
It is not remotely plausible to see the ICE actions in Minneapolis are anything other than summary executions. Anyone purporting to believe Noem & Bovino’s lies is being disingenuous, and will be held accountable when this long nightmare is over.
“will be held accountable when this long nightmare is over.” Lol, right. A Democratic administration is just going to swoop in and claw back the $150 billion dollar given to ICE/DHS? What, they’re just going to fire everyone, rehire the federal employees fired by Doge? That $150 billion dollars is feeding a lot of constituents and contractors. No senator, dem or Republican, is going to allow their voters to become unemployed. If you are hoping for some sort of revolutionary court, good luck. All that will happen is a bunch of politicians will grandstand and posture.
The obvious next move is for the regime to outlaw mail-in ballots and place the stormtroopers at polling stations to intimidate voters, under the guise of preventing “illegals” from voting. They are already arresting reporters covering protests, so this will go unchallenged. On the outside chance that there are fair elections, it will still take years to replace corrupt judges. In the meantime, apologists would be ostracized by community and family, loyalists replaced in state and local seats, and both civil and criminal lawsuits filed by citizens who had their rights violated.
GOP “VOTING RIGHTS” BILL IN THE HOUSE
More immediately, this fall it would require states to use “auditable” paper ballots in elections, which most already do; prohibit states from mailing ballots to all voters through universal vote-by-mail systems (8 STATES TODAY, ALL BLUE) ; and ban ranked choice voting, which is used in Maine and Alaska.
The 120-plus-page bill includes requirements that people present a photo ID before they vote and that states verify the citizenship of individuals when they register to vote, starting next year.
YES, BECAUSE THERE ARE MILLIONS OF “ILLEGALS” VOTING, YOU KNOW TO RISK A 5 YEAR FELONY TO SWING ELECTIONS, LOL
GAWD THE RIGHT WING IS EVIL
Voting won’t be actually made more difficult, in fact, it will be made mandatory. After all, the clowns we call politicians need to actually say they were voted in. You actually have it backward, future regimes will be scraping up every wino, crackhead, and degenerate they can find from every back alley, adult bookstore, and opium den, give them a meal and a ride to a voting booth, shove them into a booth to vote, and when it’s all over, just shove them back into the cold to die or survive until the next election. Everyone else, knowing the vote is a farce, just stays home and watches football or plays a video game.
Excellent Shredder this week. With These ICE nazis in our streets, we are living in a Putin styled dicktatorship for sure.
Both Sheriff Parkinson and DA [Dick] Dan Dow take our Rule of Law and pervert it with their “special” religion, that Jesus would not know, to justify their unjustifiable assaults on the human rights of People of Color and Peaceful Protesters.
Dow and Parkinson, like ICE, are a Public Threat. Dan Dow, due to his prejudicial overblown cases he has brought in the past, where he and his office have been kicked off prosecuting those cases, by State Courts, and prosecuted elsewhere, and usually thrown out.
And remember, recently in DA Dow’s statements after Renee Good’s killing by ICE, he implied that he would be just fine if protesters were shot by ICE.
It sounded like Dan Dow would rather live in a one party Putin style dictatorship, like Trump wants, than in Our American Democracy. They all should move to Russia.
DA Dan Dow really needs to be disbarred, and retired, as does Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche . They have no regard for our Rule of Law.
Scott:
There is no “rule of law.” We have a Constitution and courts. The Constitution is up for interpretation, some believe it is a living document, designed to reflect the current era, others believe it is literally to be interpreted strictly as it is written. It was written in a time of horse and buggy. I believe it is living document, myself.
You can thank the Bill of Rights/Amendments for your ability to publish your vitriol and if you don’t like our DA, you are free to vote for someone else.
Your time is regarding Russia is very 1950s, just like Joseph McCarthy. I like Russia and Putin. People like you don’t like Russia or Putin because like any proud country, like Iran, they refuse to submit to our dictates. Everything you said about about Putin was probably said by the British about George Washington and the colonialists here. Read a book.
I’m sorry, but you must be a russian agent, working for putin.
There is no “two sides-ism” here. You either want to live in trumps russian style dictatorship, or you don’t.
We are in a russian style dictatorship right Now!
Fly still being the Russian/Cheeto apologist
There IS such a thing as law and order, then there is Cheeto’s DOJ/ICE
Minnesota’s chief federal judge excoriated ICE leadership for ignoring more than 90 court orders across 70 cases.
“ICE is not a law unto itself,” U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz wrote.
“We never in this country have seen federal agents act with this frequency of committing civil rights violations in my lifetime, which is in recent decades,” Shah said, adding that the number of these ICE encounters are likely an undercount.
THIRTY ICE SHOOTINGS IN A YEAR, IGNORING AT LEAST 90 COURT ORDERS
BUT THE “LEFT” IS THE PROBLEM?
WORTH REPEATING:
Texas has 2.1M undocumented immigrants and Florida has 1.2M.
Minnesota has 130,000.
Don’t let anyone tell you this is about immigration.
It never was.
Trump lost MN three times. That is what THIS is about, and it’s impeachable.