The Shadow World of C.I.s – Confidential Informants

For the next two days, I’ll be in the midst of a series of meetings and the like that will take me away from the computer, so blogging will be light.

Nevertheless, oday, I want to bring to your attention to several stories about the world of confidential informants.

ICE MEN

Late last week, NPR began an intriguing and alarming series on C.I.s, in particular the informants being used by ICE. So Cal based NPR reporter Carrie Kahn spent months researching the series.

Part I tells of an ICE informant who runs amok, in a story that sounds like it comes straight out of noir crime fiction.

Part II gives the critics’ view of the very legally and morally slippery slope that is the shadowy world of C.I.s

Part III tells the story of a C.I who says he got burned badly by the government.

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BAD DEAL

Then, also this past weekend, AP reporter, Helen O’Neill tells an appalling story of an immigrant brother and sister who say they were promised legal residency in the U.S. by ICE on the condition that they work undercover as informants. Yet at the end of the agreed upon time—if they are telling the truth—they were used and, it appears, thrown away by their ICE handlers.

It’s quite at tale.

Here’s a clip:

According to Mills the deal was straightforward: In exchange for working as informants, ICE would help the Mayas get coveted S visas, which, in rare instances, are awarded to immigrants who help law enforcement.

“It was very clear,” Mills says. “That was the deal they thought they had made.”

Five years later, the Mayas insist they held up their end of the bargain, risking their lives in hours of undercover work, wearing wires and using fake names. But for reasons they do not understand, ICE agents abruptly turned against them – and they now face imminent deportation.