The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched their Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE) phone hotline yesterday which will purportedly "help" victims of undocumented immigrants.
I and apparently many others believe this is nothing more than an anti-immigrant propaganda hotline, and the hotline was flooded last night with calls reporting sightings of UFOs, alien abductions, Bigfoot, Superman and even Melania Trump.
An ICE official who spoke to Buzzfeed News whined about people using the hotline to voice their opposition to it.
"There are certainly more constructive ways to make one’s opinions heard than to prevent legitimate victims of crime from receiving the information and resources they seek because the lines are tied up by hoax callers," an ICE spokesperson said.
An ICE official who responded to an email from Fusion was far more incensed.
I hope you won’t dignify this group with the attention they are seeking. But if you choose to do so...this group’s cheap publicity stunt is beyond the pale of legitimate public discourse. Their actions seek to obstruct and do harm to crime victims; that’s objectively despicable regardless of one’s views on immigration policy.
The VOICE Office provides information to citizens and non-citizens alike regardless of status, race, etc., whose loved ones have been killed or injured by removable aliens. VOICE provides access to the same information you and other reporters are already able to obtain. Yet this group claims it’s somehow racist to give the same to victims of all races and nationalities? That is absurd.
I think we have a true believer here.