Here's an interesting bit of trivia: this afternoon the Subcommittee on Oversight, Management, and Accountability of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing titled "Seventeen Years Later: Why is Morale at DHS Still Low?".
It's true that morale in that beleaguered department is low, and has been for years (see here and here). Morale was low at one of its primary predecessor agencies as well, the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service. The reasons should be obvious: Officers and agents of the government working at highly politicized, often publicly reviled work in which their contributions to society's well being and security are neither understood nor appreciated, while at the same time they are denied the wherewithal to do their jobs.
In that regard, the House needs to take a good look at itself in the mirror. Many of its members have compared agents of the Border Patrol and ICE to Nazis and have described detention centers as "concentration camps", thus not only perverting reality to offend those agents who work hard under impossible circumstances, but also demeaning the horror of the Holocaust as well.
In addition, they have worked tirelessly to defund and disband ICE, while ensuring that they defeat the fundamental legal and institutional changes needed to aid Border Patrol agents in their crucial job of securing our nation's frontiers.
Representatives, heal thyselves.