Schlussel: DHS Goes to the Bullpen, Pays Lasorda for Management Inspiration Training

"Question: What do immigration enforcement and baseball have in common? Answer: Tommy Lasorda and the $30,001-50,000 of your tax money Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is paying him to speak at a waste of time confab of ICE Detention and Removal Operations officials from around the country," says Debbie Schlussel in an exclusive report. "The conference was organized by ICE Director of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) John Torres to promote, well, himself. It's not that Torres' Field Office Directors (FODs) and their deputies want to waste a week at this event, away from catching and deporting illegal aliens . . . ICE's DRO has never had such a conference. But Torres--who wants to head up the Department of Justice Prisoner and Alien Transport System ("Con Air")--is desperate to promote and save himself. To do the trick, he snared FOX News Channel's E. D. Hill to speak at and cover the event on the news network," she writes.

Update July 13- ICE public affaris says that Lasorda is not being paid, because his fee will be donated to charity, according to a follow-up post by Schlussel. "Even if Lasorda is not being paid--but he is--the conference is still an incredible waste of tens of thousands of ICE money and agents, supposedly for stopping the illegal alien invasion, not a week away from it, pontificating and navel-contemplating." She quotes one letter from an ICE special agent who says, "Once again, here's valuable money and time being wasted on a showboat production when it can be better utilized elsewhere. It ires me to be told that we can't get new vehicles, upgrade our computers, incarcerate and/or remove aliens, and perform other critical functions because there's no money."

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