Loosened restrictions invigorate ICE agents
Officers are exercising powers not used in years
Morale among Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is the highest in at least a decade, former senior agency officials in Houston said, as the rank and file adjust to a loosening of restrictions imposed by the Obama administration.
Agents who just weeks ago weren’t allowed to arrest people merely because they broke immigration laws say they no longer feel hamstrung and are freer to follow their training and instincts and act on initiative — especially when it comes to what the agency calls collateral arrests, picking up immigration violators who weren’t the original targets of an operation.
Under Obama, such arrests were discouraged. The priority was on immigrants with the worst criminal records, not catching low-level violators who might be tagging along with intended targets.
“In the past, you could get in trouble for who you arrested,” said Steven Boll, retired Houston field office director for ICE. “Now you could potentially get in trouble for who you didn’t arrest.”
Current ICE officials in Houston declined an interview request.
The new directives mean agents can take steps that had been prohibited before. For example, if they go to a house to arrest a known gang member, and see other suspected gang members present, they can now detain those people for immigration law violations in an effort to gain intelligence about bigger crimes like human trafficking. It would almost defy common sense not to, Boll said, but that’s how things went under the old priorities.
He noted that just because an agent arrests someone, that doesn’t mean discretion ends there. Higher-ranking officials may decide later to release the person, if bed space is needed or if the detainee has a sensitive situation, like caring for children. What’s important, he said, is that their biometric information is entered into a database, so immigration officers know who is in the country.
New marching orders
It had long riled agents that they couldn’t even do that much.
Boll said it was never so much an issue of being in a city perceived as friendly to immigrants living here illegally. He said the agency always got the backup it needed from Houston police, even though they’ve operated under a policy of not inquiring about immigration status.
“What’s hard is when you don’t feel like you have the support within your own ranks,” he said. “The onset of this administration seems much more supportive.”
For immigrants living in the United States illegally, the new ICE marching orders have translated into fears of indiscriminately wide dragnets. Software developers are even working on an app to alert people to immigration raids. They’ve heard the stories: Agents asking people for ID while getting off of a domestic flight. A woman detained while getting a court order to protect her from domestic abuse. People arrested on their way out of a church homeless shelter. And, in Houston, a young father being deported after a routine check-in with immigration officials, sending him back to a country he hasn’t seen since he was in middle school 16 years ago.
Yet, with the exception of the Houston case, these incidents began not with a random sweep, but with an investigation and a court order directing federal agents to detain a specific person.
Even in the Houston incident, it’s not part of a widening trend, at least not yet.
“Mostly I’ve heard rumors which turned out not to be true,” immigration attorney Nancy Falgout said in an email. “We’re just waiting for what may be coming. People are scared, but I have a friend who accompanied his client to a check-in with ICE a couple of days ago, and there was no problem. The attorney mentioned that everyone seemed to be checking in and leaving out the front door afterwards.”
‘It creates panic’
Boll always has been troubled by the way the word “raid” gets thrown around, conjuring up images of random sweeps at workplaces, something immigration officials haven’t done routinely in decades.
“It’s not a good use of resources, it’s disruptive to the community, and it creates panic,” said Robert Rutt, retired special agent in charge for ICE in Houston. He notes there are about 34,000 beds funded for U.S. immigration detention while there are an estimated 11 million people living here illegally. “So management is not going to allow officers to go out and just do indiscriminate roundups.”
Worksite enforcement usually targets places that have been under investigation for widespread abuse of immigration laws, the officials said. Immigration advocates saw this week’s arrests at eight Mississippi restaurants as a sign that old-style raids were back. But ICE officials said those searches were the culmination of a multi-year criminal investigation.
Yet it is unquestionable that officers are exercising powers in ways they haven’t for years.
On Wednesday, in Jackson, Miss., a 22-year-old woman who was in the process of renewing her legal status was arrested after speaking out alongside immigrant rights advocates at a news conference. The activists said the timing of Daniela Vargas’ arrest indicated she was being silenced for her speech. ICE officials said her family had overstayed a travel visa and reiterated that they do not make indiscriminate arrests.
‘It’s very political’
It’s unlikely she would have been targeted under Obama. A so-called Dreamer, she had twice been granted a reprieve under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, since she arrived from Argentina with her parents at age 7. President Trump’s comments about the DACA program have been ambiguous.
Under executive orders signed last month by Trump and implementation guidelines released last week, experts say that every immigrant here illegally is now a priority for deportation, no matter how long they have lived here or if they have committed no crimes beyond violating immigration laws.
Despite the high-profile arrests in recent weeks, it’s unclear what enforcement will look like long-term.
“The pendulum is going to swing back and forth,” Boll said. “It’s very political.”