[csa]

> The "I don't know"s in the article smack of bureaucratic ineffectiveness more than deliberate obsfuscation.

I’m pretty sure it’s not either.

In situations like this, it’s simply conflict avoidance and sticking to the responsibilities of your pay grade. Any given ICE employee may have a good idea where someone is likely to go or not go, but they almost certainly don’t know enough about any specific case to make a comment about it in a way that may have legal ramifications.

This may sound like punting responsibility, but if an ICE employee says something incorrect to someone being held, that could come back to haunt them via legal consequences. As such, if it’s not their job to answer questions about a detainee’s status, it’s probably prudent for them not to answer.

Let me be clear, I think that this is a racket. I also think that any person with decent morals and ethics should consider not working at these places.

That said, I don’t think it’s necessarily reasonable to criticize the ICE folks for staying in their lane when on the job.