Searchlight.
The author of a controversial memo telling Democrats to abandon the slogan “Abolish ICE” and instead focus on reform and retraining is a former Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection official who for the last seven months has worked for WestExec Advisors, a secretive Washington, D.C., shadow lobbyist that counts as clients major government contractors in the defense and surveillance industry.
In an interview with the Prospect, Blas Nuñez-Neto would not say who his clients are at WestExec Advisors, where he is a senior adviser, only that he has consulted in recent years on immigration, customs, and trade. He said casting his memo as serving the interests of those clients would be “a little disingenuous,” while again declining to say who those clients are.
I'm not saying that these people speak for The Democrats, but these views get heard by members of Congress much more than views like mine do.
Nuñez-Neto recommended that protesters understand that ICE agents are people, too.
“I think it would help both sides to appreciate the fact that that’s a human being across from you who may or may not want to do the things they’ve been ordered to do. In my long history being in and out of the Department [of Homeland Security], it is very often what makes the news are the terrible things that happen but what doesn’t get reported are the … stories about agents bringing toys into the border patrol station,” he said.
How'd that all work out:
The lead architect of President Joe Biden’s border strategy is not Vice President Kamala Harris, despite persistent Republican claims to the contrary. That role belongs to a bookish, little-known policy adviser named Blas Nuñez-Neto.
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A data-driven technocrat, Nuñez-Neto has engineered Biden’s pivot toward tougher border enforcement and sweeping restrictions on asylum — moves that have helped slash illegal crossings by nearly 80 percent since December.
Worked out well for his career. Many others? Not so much.
