On its web page, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has a notice aimed at any and all who might be considering a career with the federal agency.
It states: "The Department of Homeland Security has a vital mission to secure the Nation from the many threats we face.
"This requires the dedication of more than 260,000 employees in jobs that range from aviation and border security to emergency response, from cybersecurity analysis to chemical facility inspections.
"Our primary goal is clear - keeping America safe. DHS is currently seeking exceptional candidates to fill mission critical positions in the areas of: Cybersecurity; Information Technology; Intelligence; Law Enforcement; Business Operations/Mission Support; Immigration; Travel Security; Prevention and Response; Emergency Management."
There is mention of "Law Enforcement" but no specific mention of riot control, though that's what ICE agents are having to consider as protests erupt in Los Angeles in response to rising arrests of undocumented and illegal immigrants.
Perhaps "Emergency Management" covers this area, but that's a very broad term for an agency lately taking a very broad interpretation of its duties. Just ask the U.S. Marshal detained by ICE agents in Tucson, Arizona.
AS NBC Reported: " A U.S. marshal was mistakenly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Arizona, officials said Friday.
"The deputy marshal was briefly detained in the lobby of a federal building in Tucson because he 'fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE,' according to a statement from a U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson shared with NBC News on Friday. It is not clear when the incident took place.
The thing is all too many people are lately fitting general descriptions in the eyes of ICE - millions of them.
The disruption that is being caused in American society, generally, by virtue of ICE actions and aims cannot be underestimated. Riots on the streets of Los Angeles are only part of it.
Of course, and no argument, ICE has a critical role and function in protecting the nation and for sure there is work enough to be done in going after gangs and those illegally in the county who have committed crimes. ICE itself refers to such people as "The Worst of the Worst."
But the upending of a growing number of lives and families, the economic disruption, the fear that is spreading through immigrant communities across the country, are not, we would hope, what ICE agents, most of them at any rate, see as being their primary function.
What they see of course is secondary to what they are ordered to do. And so they obey those orders. And so citizens respond, often in anger. And so the deeply regrettable scenes in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
This page has touched on this before, but the situation we are facing now is rooted in the failure of Congress, over all too many years, to face decisively into the immigration conundrum.
The failure to implement comprehensive immigration reform, or to just pass bills that simply allow for the undocumented to obtain basic work authorization, has steered the course of events to the disturbing images we now see on our TV screens, online and in print.
Those images include people being forcibly removed from our streets, workplaces, even courthouses, and bundled into vehicles by masked ICE agents, sometimes supported by local police and now, in Los Angeles, by National Guard troops.
If it is the intention of the Trump administration to deport most or all of the estimated eleven to twelve million undocumented and illegal people living in the United States the next few years will be delivering many more, and potentially even more disturbing images, than those we have witnessed thus far.
As for Congress? There is little to be said. Like the rest of us, the House and Senate simply looks on with sharply varying degrees of approval or opposition.
Looks on at an America where xenophobia lurks in the spreading clouds of tear gas.
