ICE officials announce it will resume arresting noncriminal migrants
U.S. immigration officials quietly announced they would resume regular apprehension and detention practices, an apparent reversal from an earlier temporary suspension of noncriminal enforcement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Late Friday afternoon, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement updated its COVID-19 information webpage to say that the agency is “confident that our officers can properly and safely carry out operations.”
The statement continued: “To help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, we have taken several precautionary measures — from ensuring that our frontline operators have adequate personal protective equipment, maximizing telework for agency personnel whose duties do not require them to be in the office, completing temperature checks before removal, and requiring the isolating of detainees as appropriate to prevent the spread in detention facilities.”
The announcement — which was not sent out to media outlets, a break in the usual protocol — replaced an agency statement that ICE publicly announced in March, when it said it would “adjust its enforcement posture.” The new statement no longer talks about using more “discretion” when arresting noncriminal undocumented migrants, an attempt to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.
In an email this week, ICE said the agency “does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
During the pandemic, the agency had said it would focus its enforcement on “public safety risks and individuals subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds.” Examples included investigations into child exploitation, gangs, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, human smuggling and terrorism. For people who aren’t a subject of those investigations, the agency said it would “delay enforcement actions until after the crisis.”
Unlike its prior announcement, ICE’s new statement omits information about any immigrant population it would avoid arresting and detaining.