Immigration SWAT teams moving to N.Y.
Immigration SWAT teams are reportedly being redeployed to New York to beef up enforcement teams in an escalation of President Trump’s feud with cities that reject his crackdown on undocumented people.
Heavily armed troops will be moved from the southern border to the city to round up immigrants, despite the officers’ lack of experience operating in an urban environment where many residents oppose their presence.
A Customs and Border Patrol spokesman claimed the troops would “enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national security.”
About 100 members of a tactical unit called BORTAC will be sent to New York and Chicago, both have proclaimed themselves sanctuary cities in which local law enforcement does not cooperate with round ups of immigrants, the New York Times reported Friday.
More agents are expected to be sent to Newark, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans and Detroit. The assignments are expected to stretch into spring, during a time of year when chilly temperatures traditionally limit flows of immigrants coming north from Central America and Mexico.
The BORTAC units usually work raiding safe houses and busting dangerous people-smugglers in the sparsely-populated desert badlands along the border with Mexico.
They will now find themselves backing up Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in chock a block urban neighborhoods where they are often a distrusted presence at best.
Just last week, a bystander was shot in the face and wounded by ICE agents arresting an undocumented immigrant in Brooklyn.