Arrests of immigrants soaring under Trump
Critics: ICE targeting those who check in regularly with agency
Seventeen-year-old Marco Coss graduated from Red Mountain High School in Mesa on Thursday, but his father wasn’t there to see him receive a diploma.
His father, 36-year-old Marco Tulio Coss-Ponce, is among the growing number of undocumented immigrants swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Arizona and across the country since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 and immediately dismantled former President Barack Obama’s deportation policies in favor of a tougher approach.
Statistics provided by ICE show the agency arrested 41,898 immigrants, including 1,770 in Arizona, during the first 100 days of Trump’s administration. That is an increase of nearly 35 percent nationally, and nearly 12.6 percent in Arizona, compared with the same period the year before.
The sharp increase in arrests has drawn criticism from immigration lawyers and advocates. They say ICE officers are
driving up arrest numbers by going after undocumented immigrants who are the easiest to find: the ones who check in regularly with ICE, such as Coss-Ponce.
Coss-Ponce was suddenly arrested and deported on May 11. He had been allowed to remain in the country since 2013, despite having a final order of removal, as long as he checked in regularly with ICE under an order of supervision.
“People like Marco are easy prey because we’ve been operating on a level of trust with ICE so he voluntary presented himself. They knew exactly where he was,” said Ravindar Arora, Coss-Ponce’s lawyer. “It’s not like he was one of the many people out there who have final orders of removal and ICE doesn’t know where they are or have any clue about them.”
Coss-Ponce was one of several undocumented immigrants who drew media attention during the early stages of ICE’s shift in policy. Like the others, he showed up for a check-in with ICE and was suddenly taken into custody and deported.
In early February, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos of Mesa, whose two children are U.S. citizens, was removed from the United States and transported to Nogales after she arrived at ICE offices for her routine check-in. She had been living in the United States since 1996.
In March, Juan Carlos Fomperosa Garcia of Phoenix, a single father of three U.S.-citizen children, showed up for a check-in meeting with ICE officials in Phoenix and was detained and then deported.
Immigration lawyers say there are other examples of undocumented immigrants being suddenly deported during check-ins, but they haven’t received the same attention. “Locally, we have seen more people getting picked up on checkin, to where, in the past, they would have come in and just been let out again, based on the humanitarian factors of their case,” said Ray Ybarra Maldonado, an immigration lawyer who represented Garcia de Rayos.
“But now,” he added, “in order to get those numbers up so that Trump can appear to be more aggressive than Obama, they are taking in more people that in the past were just let go.”
Under Obama, ICE officers were directed to focus mainly on deporting national-security threats, immigrants convicted of serious crimes and recent border-crossers. They were also directed to use their discretion not to take action against undocumented immigrants who had no criminal records and had strong family and community ties to the U.S.
In contrast, Trump has ordered immigration authorities to tighten enforcement and expand deportation priorities to include a wide range of undocumented immigrants, including those convicted or charged with minor offenses, such as traffic infractions.
Delia Salvatierra, another immigration lawyer, said that to boost arrest numbers, ICE officers also are looking though old files and calling in immigrants they have encountered in the past but did not try to deport because under the Obama administration, they were not deemed priorities.
Now, under Trump, ICE is pursuing deportation cases against them, she said.
“What I have seen is individuals who under Obama were not priorities ... are now being dug up, to find them and put them into a pipeline,” she said.
Of the 1,770 ICE arrests in Arizona during the first 100 days of Trump’s administration, 551, or nearly a third, had no criminal record, according to statistics released to The Arizona Republic by ICE. Non-criminal arrests rose nearly 12 percent in Arizona compared with the same period the year before, while arrests of immigrants convicted of crimes rose almost 13 percent, the statistics show.
The sharp rise in arrests shows that ICE has wasted no time in implementing Trump’s immigration orders, attorney Ybarra Maldonado said.
“What is happening at ICE is they are re-looking at every single case that comes in the door, and they are trying to look for a reason to deport somebody instead of letting them stay,” he said.
ICE arrests in Arizona during the first 100 days of the Trump administration did not rise as fast as nationally — 12.6 percent in Arizona vs. 35 percent nationally. Ybarra Maldonado said that’s because for years, Arizona has taken an aggressive approach toward immigration enforcement under former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and laws such as Senate Bill 1070, leaving proportionately fewer undocumented immigrants to arrest. “Things have been so hot and aggressive here,” he said. “Now the heat that we felt in Arizona is spreading across the nation.”
ICE did not respond to requests to interview local officials regarding what led to the rise in ICE arrests in Arizona or why ICE arrests rose faster on the national level. In a statement, acting ICE Director Thomas Homan attributed the rise in ICE arrests nationally to “President Trump’s commitment to enforce our immigration laws” and to the “clear direction” ICE personnel have been given to “focus on threats to public safety and national security.”
That “has resulted in a substantial increase in the arrest of convicted criminal aliens. However, when we encounter others who are in the country unlawfully, we will execute our sworn duty and enforce the law,” Homan said.
Coss-Ponce, meanwhile, is now living with his parents in Ciudad Obregon, in the state of Sonora, said his wife, Laura Yudiria Romo Cruz, 34.
She remains in Mesa with the couple’s sons, Marco and 14-year-old Antonio.
She said her husband, who worked as a painter for a construction company, was the family’s breadwinner. Since her husband’s deportation, she and her sons have been surviving on the family’s small savings, she said.
The day Coss-Ponce was deported, their sons “broke down and sobbed that afternoon. I think that something they always feared would happen finally happened, and it was heartbreaking,” said Rev. Ken Heintzelman, pastor at Shadow Rock United Church of Christ in Phoenix.
In 2014, the Shadow Rock congregation agreed to allowed Coss-Ponce to live at the church to protect him from deportation after he was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge.
Coss-Ponce had lived in the U.S. illegally since 1999. He had no criminal record and was turned over to ICE following a traffic stop for speeding in 2009, when he was also found to be driving without a license, said Arora, his attorney.
On the day he was supposed to take sanctuary at the church, ICE agreed to allow him to remain with his family in the U.S. under the order of supervision, according to Heintzelman and Arora.
Since then, he had scheduled checkins with ICE once or twice a year, Arora said.
In April, when his next check-in was scheduled, Arora said ICE officials told Arora that ICE was no longer renewing orders of supervision and that Coss-Ponce would be given 30 days to get his affairs in order before reporting to ICE for removal. Arora said he then asked ICE for more time to apply for a stay of removal, and ICE agreed.
On May 11, Arora went to the ICE offices on Central Avenue in Phoenix to file the stay of removal. When he arrived, ICE officials requested that CossPonce also come to the offices, but Arora said they assured him he would not be taken into custody.
When Coss-Ponce arrived, ICE officers sent him to a nearby office to be fitted for a monitoring device that he would wear until a decision was made about the stay of removal. Arora went with him but had to leave early to attend a hearing in immigration court in downtown Phoenix. After he left, Arora said, ICE officers arrested Coss-Ponce.
Arora said he believes the arrest was orchestrated to avoid a scene at the Phoenix offices of ICE, where supporters and media had gathered earlier in the day when Coss-Ponce and Arora arrived to apply for the stay of removal.
“They essentially lied to our faces and then went and picked him up when they knew no one was around,” Arora said.
ICE in Phoenix did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Coss-Ponce is looking into applying for asylum to return to the U.S. because he does not feel safe in Mexico, Arora said. It’s a long shot, but Coss-Ponce thinks he has a good case, Arora said.
Earlier this year, a cousin was murdered by drug-cartel members. Afterward, several family members in Mexico received threats, and they are now in hiding, Arora said.
It’s the second time a family member of Coss-Ponce’s has been killed in Mexico. In 2008, another cousin who was a police officer was killed, Arora said.
“What made his case unique is he would have been able to gather a lot of documentation,” Arora said.