“It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.” It’s an old adage, but people always seem to forget it.
Last Halloween, Julie Myers, the assistant secretary of homeland security for immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) did something very dumb at an agency costume contest. A white lawyer dressed in dark make-up, fake dreadlocks, and prison garb entered the contest as a “Jamaican detainee from Krome,” referencing an ICE detention facility in Miami. Myers helped name the lawyer the winner of contest, and had her picture taken with him.
It went downhill from there.
First, after pictures from the event surfaced, Myers apparently misled lawmakers about what transpired. Second, according to a new report, Myers also tried to cover her tracks by eliminating the evidence.
The nation’s top immigration enforcement official ordered the destruction of photographs of an office Halloween party that showed a white agency employee dressed as a black detainee, according to a Congressional investigation whose report was released on Tuesday.
The Democratic staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security said Julie L. Myers, the assistant secretary of homeland security for immigration and customs enforcement, ordered that the photos be removed from a digital camera in a “coordinated effort to conceal” her role in awarding one of the top costume prizes to the employee.
The report said Ms. Myers, who was acting assistant secretary at the time, might have moved to cover up the events to avoid derailing her Senate confirmation.
Don’t worry, though, Myers’ office believes it can explain all of this.
Kelly A. Nantel, an agency spokeswoman, confirmed Tuesday that Ms. Myers had ordered that the photographs be deleted, but said she had done so because she belatedly realized that the costume was inappropriate and that it would be offensive if the photos were included in any agency publications.
But Ms. Nantel said that Ms. Myers never tried to cover up that the event had occurred. In fact, Ms. Myers sent a message to all agency employees two days after the party acknowledging that “a few of the costumes were inappropriate.”
“To suggest she somehow coordinated a cover-up is absolutely false,” Ms. Nantel said.
I’m curious — how likely was it that ICE publications would feature a photograph of a top-ranking official standing alongside a white lawyer with dark make-up on Halloween? And how incompetent are the managers over there, given that the photographs weren’t destroyed and eventually ended up on CNN?
In any case, Paul Kiel notes that the flap is renewing questions about diversity at the agency.
[T]he committee has used the occurrence to point out the lack of diversity at ICE and DHS more broadley, noting that ICE has zero African-American senior executives and 28 whites. It’s a point that lawmakers were able to demonstrate when Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff last visited the committee.
At a recent House hearing with Chertoff, Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) asked the secretary’s aides to stand up. Ten of them did — and all of them were white. “Please reassure me that your staff is more diverse than that,” Watt told Chertoff. The DHS secretary suggested that some of his aides may appear white, but we shouldn’t make any assumptions. (For the record, all 10 were, in fact, white, and Chertoff was forced to backpedal.)
It’s quite a cabinet agency the Bush gang has put together, isn’t it?