Under Trump administration, ICE scraps paperwork officers once had to do before immigration arrests

For more than 15 years, before carrying out an operation to arrest an immigrant in the United States, the Immigration and Customs Division Division Officers in matters of application of the law and referral were required to fill out a form with details on their target – name, appearance, known addresses for approval, the antecedents of immigration, the criminal history and more – and give it to an approval.

This year, in a sign of how the agency went from the targeted application to Broad Street Sweet under the Trump administration, this policy was completed, six current and former officials and ice agents said and the Ministry of Internal Security at NBC News.

“It is difficult to fill a work sheet that simply says:” Go to the Home Depot parking lot, “said one of the former ice officials.

The change of policy highlights the way the ice now works before the anticipated repression of immigration to Chicago and Boston, and it helps to explain the apparently spontaneous nature of recent arrests in Los Angeles and Washington, DC

Darius Reeves, the former director of the ICE Baltimore field office, and two former DHS officials, under which Ice Falls said that the form, known as the field operations work sheet, had been required for almost every arrest that the division had made. The only exceptions, they said, were cases where the ice was called to help local law enforcement agencies.

The exact date of change is not clear, but this happened before this summer. Reeves, who left the ice in May, said that he was informed before his departure and that he had been communicated from the DHS management. The decision was made because of the perception that the work sheet is “a waste of time”, he said, but he said that he thought it was actually “a very precious necessity” now “bypassed … so that they can continue to flood the streets” of officers. Reeves said that even if the workshops are no longer compulsory, he knows that some officers still use them for the sake of future legal responsibility.

Trump senior officials, such as the “Tsar” border Tom Homan, said they prioritize the detention and expulsion of immigrants with criminal history – people Homan calls “the worst of the worst”. But this kind of targeted work is in contradiction with the promises of President Donald Trump to lead the greatest mass expulsion in American history, sending “millions and millions” outside the country. Consequently, the ice has undergone immense pressure to quickly increase the number of immigrants it enters, with less respect to find out if they have criminal history.

NBC News reported that during a meeting in May, the deputy chief of staff of the White House, Stephen Miller, reprimanded the ice officials, threatening to dismiss the managers of the field offices who led the least arrests each month if the agency did not start to do at least 3,000 arrests per day.

Since then, Ice has moved to wide scales in places frequented by immigrants – for example, the Home Depot parking lots, where undocumented people are gathering in the hope of being hired for construction and other works – and the neighborhoods they live in. Social media users capturing viral videos from all over the country presumed that officers were looming rather than specifically targeting individual immigrants.

Ice did not respond to several requests for comments.

Tobed vs profiling

The application of the Immigration Act is likely to progress soon in Chicago, where there are several districts with Latin predominance. DHS builds a staging area in a naval base in the north of the city and calls on additional ice and border patrol agents to carry out more immigration arrests this month, two federal sources of application of the familiar familiar law with the plans have declared.

Ice officers are working on a list of “great value” objectives to be stopped in Chicago, said one of the current DHS officials, such as immigrants who have committed crimes.

Scott Shuchart, who was the deputy director of the ICE for regulatory affairs and policies during the Biden administration, said that efforts in Los Angeles and Washington also involved that ICE produced more random arrests to increase figures. He was not aware of the change of policy to interrupt the workheets, but said that before, they were used to show that the officers had made their “homework”.

“There would be a reason why you opt for Pierre rather than Paul,” he said. “They are now interested in figures, and if you are interested in figures, you do things like walking in the racial profiling of people.”

The DHS and the ice denied that they were racily profiling. Internal security secretary Kristi Noem told journalists that “each operation” is based on “investigative work and business”.

The acting director of the ice, Todd Lyons, recently told NBC News that the agency did not take advantage but that the realization of “targeted application operations”.

However, one of the former DHS officials said that the terminology does not mean that ice officers know in advance who they stop.

Another of the former ice officials said: “They fold the definition of” targeted “to comply with their operations. By “targeted”, they could mean going to an area where they can find immigrants. ”

And in July, a federal judge of Los Angeles issued a temporary ban prescription preventing ice from carrying out “itinerant patrols” and relying on the breeds of people or other factors, such as their spanish speaking, as reasons to hold them.

An analysis by David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute, revealed that the arrests of ice in the Los Angeles region fell 66% after the judge’s ordinance. The data obtained thanks to a request from the Freedom of Information ACT by the expulsion data project, noted Bier, showed that ice has carried out 756 arrests in the region of the week preceding the judge’s ordinance. Two weeks later, the number was 258.

On Monday, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to remove the judge’s order and the restrictions he had set in judgments in the Los Angeles region.

Similar operations seem to have taken place in Washington. Raquel Sánchez told NBC News that she had seen federal officers in her neighborhood in August. Then, early in the morning, she and her husband, Jesus Muñoz Colorado, led to work when they were arrested by a group including ice officers. Seven unmarked cars surrounded their vehicle, blocking the future, she said, then police struck the car door and told the couple to ride in the windows where they would break them.

It is not clear if Sánéz and Colorado were specifically targeted for arrest, but they were not outside their house when they were arrested, and Sánchez said that in that she could say, the police did not know their names. The video of the judgment provided to NBC News shows them the agents that they are going through the process of requesting visas in U, which is given to the victims of certain crimes and people who have information on these crimes and can be useful to the police, as well as to family members.

Sánchez and Colorado were handcuffed and taken to a local ice installation. She spoke with NBC News after her release; He is still in detention.

Their lawyer, Julia Toro, who has been practicing immigration law in Washington for 20 years, said that since the start of immigration repression, she has had eight customers without criminal history that has been arrested.

“The officers ask them:” Do you have documents and have papers? ” Show me, ”she said. “It is not as if they knew who they pick up. These are arbitrary judgments. ”

In a press release provided to a Telemundo 44 journalist in Washington, who is also part of the NBC News Group, a spokesperson for the ICE said: “Jesus Munoz-Colorado and his wife Raquel Naemi Sanchez-Monge, are illegal foreigners without legal status to stay in the United States.” The spokesperson also said that none of the “outstanding visas to stay legally in the United States”.

Responsibility for officers?

Several of the current and former officials of the ICE and the DHS who informed NBC News of the end of the policy forcing the use of the workplands of the field operations also declared that the workheets did not just aim to plan or to establish a justification for the arrests: they also protected the officers. For example, Reeves said that although the form does not include a section on this subject, the officers often wrote and joined another sheet with information on the question of whether a targeted person in an operation could be armed, information that helps ensure the security of officers.

The form could also help legally protect the officers, they all said.

“For a professional agency of the police, you are not content to fly embarrassing. Crossing your T, dotting your I, by checking with OPLA,” said one of the former DHS officials, referring to the agency’s office of the main legal advisor. “They [ICE officers] May not believe it, but it really protects them to make sure they really operate within their legal limits. »»

Paul Hunker, who was previously the chief lawyer of the ICE in Dallas, said that the filled workheets could be used to protect them in the proceedings. The officers could be prosecuted for violations of civil rights if they made arrests without probable reason, he said.

“What is essential is that the ice must articulate a likely cause to stop, so the worksheet could be useful to them if they are disputed on this subject,” Hunker told NBC News.