Department of Homeland Security employees enforce immigration laws. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Immigration agents fight Senate bill

A union of more than 12,000 immigration agents is opposing the Senate’s version of comprehensive immigration reform, the beginning of a week in which supporters hope the bill can clear the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, which represents the agents who issue and handle immigration documents, is for the first time joining the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council and will announce its position against the bill on Monday .


Combined, the two unions represent 20,000 Department of Homeland Security employees charged with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council represents deportation agents.

“The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications,” National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council President Kenneth Palinkas wrote in a release announcing the group’s opposition. “USCIS has been turned into an ‘approval machine.’”

Palinkas said the new bill would do nothing to fix the agency’s problems and leave in place an “insurmountable bureaucracy.”

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The opposition of the National CIS Council is a boost to the bill’s opponents in the Senate, and to National ICE Council President Chris Crane, who has become a loud and prominent voice against the legislation, but had found himself alone among federal law enforcement unions in opposition. Palinkas said he would sign a letter Crane sent to senators earlier this month declaring the Gang of Eight legislation “fails to meet the needs of the law enforcement community.”

Like Crane, who has repeatedly said ICE agents were left out of negotiations developing the bill, Palinkas bemoaned his union’s lack of input into the proposal.

“The USCIS Council was not consulted in the crafting of the Gang of Eight’s legislation,” Palinkas wrote. “Instead, the legislation was written with special interests — producing a bill that makes the current system worse, not better.”