“My daughter used to say, ‘Daddy sends people away,’” Cole recalls. “Now she says, ‘Daddy helps kids come home.’ Same knowledge. Different compass.”
Hardline enforcement advocates call it “coddling.” “Deportation officers are not social workers,” says Tom Ridgeway, a former ICE field office director. “The job is to execute final orders. If you can’t handle that, leave. We don’t need a taxpayer-funded guilt-relief program.”
For years, the official response was standard Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)—counseling hotlines and stress management webinars. But attrition rates kept climbing. Then, in 2019, a pilot program emerged from an unlikely partnership: ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and a coalition of immigrant legal aid groups.
But when he hung up his ballistic vest at 52, he didn't retire to a quiet life of fishing. He became a caseworker for unaccompanied minors.