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When Gary Mead sent notice of his planned resignation to colleagues, it's likely he didn't expect that the move would almost instantly become a furious topic in the boiling debate over the sequester. But this is the state of Washington's fever. Twitter quickly decided that Mead, an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security, first was and then wasn't resigning because of yesterday's announced release of immigrant detainees. In doing so, he became a fistfight in a skirmish in a battle that's part of America's long, tedious, partisan war.

Until Tuesday, Mead was the mid-level executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations at ICE, and admittedly he picked a bad time to resign. For more than a week, the administration has been warning of the various horrible effects of massive budget cuts slated for the end of the week. When the Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday afternoon that it had released several hundred non-violent detainees to save the costs of housing them (though they will still be monitored), a move that might normally have been a bit contentious quickly became top-tier political fodder. The White House denied involvement in the decision; Speaker of the House John Boehner told CBS Evening News that it was "outrageous" that the agency couldn't find cost savings short of "letting criminals go free."