NEW YORK– The immigration officials sat in their vehicles near a two-story building before dawn. A New York subway line rumbled overhead, and then an officer’s voice came over the radio.
After watching for about two hours, he said, “I think that’s Tango,” using the term “target.” “Gray hoodie. Backpack. Walk quickly.”
Immigration officers surrounded and handcuffed a 23-year-old man from Ecuador who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor.
Kenneth Genalo, head of Enforcement and Removal Operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York, said it is a popular misconception that agents can enter a community and round up a large group of people who are in the United States illegally and send them to their homes. can send to prisons. land at home.
“It’s called targeted enforcement,” Genalo said. “We don’t grab people and then take them to JFK and put them on a plane.”
Now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House, there is great interest how the Republican will implement his immigration agendaincluding a campaign promise of mass deportations. His priorities could clash with the reality facing agents focused on enforcement and removals, including the New York unit that gave The Associated Press a glimpse into its activities: the number of people already on the list to to target exceeds the number of available agents. do the work.
The Biden administration did reduced deportation priorities for threats to public safety and recent border crossings. Trump’s new ‘border czar’ Tom Homansay officials in the new government will do the same Prioritize those who pose a risksuch as criminals, before targeting immigrants removed from the US by the courts
But Homan has also indicated that enforcement could be broader: “If you are in the country illegally, you have a problem,” he said recently on Dr. Phil’s Merit TV.
It’s quite a task.
About 1.4 million people have been issued final removal orders, while about 660,000 are under immigration supervision. convicted of crimes or facing charges. But only 6,000 agents within ICE are charged with monitoring noncitizens in the country and then tracking down and removing those who are ineligible to stay.
These staff numbers have remained largely static, as their workload has roughly quadrupled to 7.6 million over the past decade. About 10% of that workforce was pulled from their regular jobs last year to go to the U.S.-Mexico border at times of peak immigration.
Jason Houser, ICE chief of staff earlier in the Biden administration, said the number of agents needed to prosecute those deemed a threat to public safety is in direct conflict with the purpose of to deport people in large numbers.
“You’re not going to be able to do both with the resources you have, with the deportation officers you have,” Houser said. “The arithmetic alone and the time-consuming nature of these types of arrests will overwhelm any ability to arrive at those large-scale numbers.”
Genalo said officers in charge of individual cases should be given direction, ensure they have the legal authority to arrest someone and then track the person down. They are usually not allowed to enter a home, so they want to catch people outside.
In this recent operation, about a dozen officers gathered in a parking lot at the White Castle in the Bronx before 5 a.m. After donning their body armor and checking their equipment, they walked around for a briefing.
In addition to the 23-year-old Ecuadorian man, they went after a 36-year-old Mexican man convicted of forcibly touching a young girl and another Ecuadorian also convicted of sexually abusing a minor.
The first target, the 23-year-old man who pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl, is believed to have usually left the apartment building around 7:00 or 7:30 am. Sometimes he was with a wife and child.
“The lights came on on the first floor of the apartment,” an officer waiting outside said over the radio. Later: “Someone came out of the basement, but that’s not our target.”
They finally saw him, pushed him into the back of a car and quickly left the neighborhood.
Inside, the man’s 22-year-old wife did not know what had happened until he later called from detention.
In an interview, she said they met in Ecuador and had a child – a bubbly three-year-old girl with braids – and that she was pregnant with their second. He worked in construction while she was a manicurist.
She said she knew why her husband was arrested, but felt there were significant mitigating factors. She said they knew it was possible her husband could be sent back to Ecuador after his criminal case was completed, but it was still a shock.
ICE deported more than 270,000 people over a recent twelve-month period, the highest annual number in ten years, The agency writes this in a recent report. But it also says it has made fewer arrests of non-citizens, partly because of the demand to send staff to the border. A larger proportion of those arrested had a serious criminal history.
Some cities and states are working with ICE to extradite people in their custody who are not U.S. citizens.
But many left-leaning states and cities have so-called sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. In New York City, for example, ICE had an office in the jail where they could easily take custody of non-citizens. In 2014, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation that eliminated ICE and limited police cooperation.
His successor, Eric Adams, has shown willingness to revise some of those policies. He met recently with Homan and told reporters they agreed on prosecuting people who commit violent crimes.
Genalo said agents spend time and resources rounding up immigrants who few argue should have the right to stay in America.
“How can you say that shelter policies help the community if you immediately release all these criminals back into the community?” he said. “We are safer when we work together.”
Staffing is also a problem. He said he should have about 325 officers, but in recent years that number has been about 30% lower.
Many immigration advocates have long been concerned about ICE’s tactics, and these concerns are only growing with Trump returning to power in January.
Advocates say the new administration’s stance on addressing threats to public safety is longstanding policy. They object to the rhetoric that portrays immigrants as people to be feared. They say there may be nuances in some cases: Perhaps someone committed a crime long ago and was rehabilitated, or someone facing a final deportation order moved and never received a notice.
During Trump’s first term, there were many “collateral arrests” in which immigration officials detained people other than those targeted, said Jehan Laner, a senior staff attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. That destabilizes communities, she said, adding: “We saw them going after everyone.”
Genalo said he could not comment on the new government’s plans, but emphasized that officers pursue specific targets with criminal histories. He said he has about 58,000 people with criminal convictions or pending charges.
“I’m pretty sure we’re going to be dealing with the criminal population for a while,” Genalo said.
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Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report.