Tactical border agents headed to Houston
Elite group to assist with migrant raids in sanctuary cities
The Trump administration is deploying law enforcement tactical units from the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a supercharged arrest operation in sanctuary cities — including Houston — across the country, an escalation in the president’s battle against localities that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement.
The specially trained officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to boost the enforcement power of local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to two officials
who are familiar with the secret operation. Additional agents are expected to be sent to Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J.
The move reflects President Donald Trump’s persistence in cracking down on sanctuary cities, localities that have refused to cooperate in handing over immigrants targeted for deportation to federal authorities. It comes soon after the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department announced a series of measures that will affect both U.S. citizens and immigrants living in those places.
Lawrence Payne, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, confirmed that the agency was deploying 100 officers to work with ICE, which conducts arrests in the interior of the country, “in order to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety and strengthen our national security.”
The deployment of the teams will run from February through May, according to an email sent to CBP personnel, which was read to the New York Times by one official familiar with the planning.
Among the agents being deployed to sanctuary cities are members of an elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, which acts essentially as the SWAT team of the Border Patrol. With additional gear such as stun grenades and enhanced special operations forcestype training, including sniper certification, the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records.
The unit’s work often takes place in the most rugged and swelteringly hot areas of the border. It can involve breaking into stash houses known to be filled with drugs and weapons and maintained by smuggling operations.
In sanctuary cities, the BORTAC agents will be asked to support interior officers in run-of-the-mill immigration arrests, the officials said. Their presence could spark new fear in immigrant communities that have been on high alert under the stepped-up deportation and detention policies adopted after Trump took office.
In a statement, ICE’s acting director, Matthew Albence, said the deployment comes in response to policies adopted by sanctuary cities, which have made it harder for immigration agents to do their jobs.
“As we have noted for years, in jurisdictions where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, our officers are forced to make at-large arrests of criminal aliens who have been released into communities,” he said. “When sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, it increases the occurrence of preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims.”
But Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of CBP, which oversees tactical units along the border, said sending the officers to conduct enforcement within cities, where they are not trained to work, could escalate situations that are already volatile. He called the move a “significant mistake.”
“If you were a police chief and you were going to make an apprehension for a relatively minor offense, you don’t send the SWAT team. And BORTAC is the SWAT team,” Kerlikowske said. “They’re trained for much more hazardous missions than this.”
The BORTAC agents will be charged with backing up ICE agents during deportation operations and standing by as a show of force, the officials said.
The goal of the new joint operation, one of the officials said, was to increase arrests in the sanctuary jurisdictions by at least 35 percent.
Even with the added show of force from BORTAC, agents will be limited in their abilities, compared with police or sheriff’s deputies. Unlike operations on the border, where BORTAC agents may engage in armed confrontations with drug-smuggling suspects, immigration agents in cities are enforcing civil, rather than criminal, infractions. They are not allowed to forcibly enter properties to make arrests, and the presence of BORTAC agents, while helpful in boosting the number of agents on the ground, may prove most useful for the visual message it sends.
The agents will not be busting down doors or engaging in shootouts, said one official with direct knowledge of the operation.
The aggressive immigration enforcement tactics being implemented around the country are not limited to any one agency. In a widely circulated video recorded in El Paso on Tuesday night, Border Patrol agents are shown subduing and using a taser to apprehend a man in a Burger King restaurant.
The video shows the man pleading with the agents while shouting that he had done nothing wrong. A female bystander asks the agents to leave the restaurant as she cries while witnessing the episode. While the man was writhing in pain on the floor after being stunned repeatedly, another woman in the video approached the agents and asked, “Why are you still hitting him?”
A Border Patrol spokesman said in a statement that the apprehended man was a “suspected alien smuggler,” without offering any evidence to support that assertion.
“The man refused to cooperate with the verbal instructions and attempted to avoid being handcuffed, and a struggle ensued,” the spokesman said.
An ICE spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the latest effort in sanctuary cities. But he added that the agency had “made it abundantly clear for years that, in jurisdictions where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, our officers would be redirected to make at-large arrests.”