Law enforcement catching a child rapist? Good work. Federal authorities equipped to catch a man who made child porn on his phone? Awesome. Enter mission creep.
It is difficult to have a problem with federal authorities apprehending a grown man who recorded himself engaging in sex acts with a six-year-old and a ten-year-old — and this is exactly how the mission creep of federal agencies begins. When an agency intended to have authority in one area begins to do something noble in an entirely different area of law enforcement, critics come across as monsters for making an issue of the expansion of the particular agency involved.
A recent case involving the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) provides and excellent example of such expansions. ICE, charged with immigration and customs enforcement, has a division named ICE HSI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations. The redundant division in the agency engaged in an investigative effort that previously would have been under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They took on a case involving a child predator inside the U.S. who made videos of himself engaging in sex acts with children in Louisiana.
The agency issued a December 16, 2013 call for the public’s help in identifying and capturing “John Doe” after videos surfaced with geo-tags indicating the videos were made in a specific area of Louisiana. The images were distributed to local law enforcement, and an arrest warrant was issued for “John Doe” in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The effort worked, and the then-unknown suspect is now in custody.
The videos surfaced in Canada, and authorities there discovered two videos with embedded GPS coordinates revealing that they were made in Jonesboro, Louisiana on February 29, 2012 and March 2, 2012. The FBI was not brought in to lead the investigation because the videos were found in a foreign nation. With no indication that the Louisiana predator filmmaker traveled across international boundaries with his videos, ICE HSI took the investigation.
Why didn’t ICE inform the FBI of the matter and work with FBI special agents to arrest the predator in the United States? Why do two separate federal agencies have special agents doing the exact same jobs? The issue likely has to do with the need of fiefdoms and bureaucracies to perpetuate themselves and stay relevant.
Mission Creep in Law Enforcement: Expanding Federal Fiefdoms
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