Ken Genalo vividly recalls the scene at Ground Zero fifteen years ago as a volunteer first responder with the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Special Response Team in Newark, New Jersey: the turmoil, the smoke, the smell of burning in the air.

Yet these days Genalo, now the assistant field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in Newark, talks about his memories with a different focus – one of inspiration. ... Read more

Barrett Weiser: #WhyIServe

“On 9/11 I was having breakfast with a Pearl Harbor survivor and he said to me, ‘This will be your generation's Pearl Harbor.’ And I sincerely believe that,” he said.

Barrett Weiser, now a section chief with ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was a Naval reservist on active duty at the time of the attacks. ... Read more

Carolyn Clark: #WhyIServe

Caroline Clark was in eighth grade on 9/11 but remembers her mother crying and the general confusion of the day. She reflects on how those events changed how her generation thought and learned about history: “I think as a millennial, the world changed for us in the way of insecurity. Because growing up, world history classes, American politics classes had to be changed. And to understand that the United States wasn’t the world superpower, that we could be attacked in our homeland just like Pearl Harbor. It was a weird time to grow up.” ... Read more