Under pressure from the White House, ICE is looking for new ways to increase arrests
The White House demands have pushed a radical increase in arresting people who illegally entered the country immigration officials to excessively fulfill President Trump’s pledge to collectively deport.
Migration and customs enforcement are making raids at the workplace throughout the country, such as those in the Los Angeles area last week, which started the vast protests and response. The agency makes amazing transformations so that the agents are available seven days a week to try to achieve arrest goals and ask criminal investigators who usually focus on cases such as human trafficking to help set goals. The public is also asked to contact advice to report illegal immigration.
ICE work is assisted by applying the new mapping drawing that determines the position of people with deportation orders that can be expelled quickly, drawing from the data in agencies throughout the government, according to the documents obtained by the New York Times.
“I said that from the first day, if you illegally in the country, you are not out of the table,” said Thomas de Human, Mr. Trump, in an interview. “Therefore, we open that hole.”
Stephen Miller, the White House Vice -Chief of Staff, was deeply involved in the scenes, where he met with senior ice officials in recent weeks and numbers audit, according to people familiar with his participation.
Former officials said that intense pressure by senior administration officials creates an atmosphere that raises the possibility of errors at a time when officers and agents are pushed to make dependency decisions.
“You will have people who are pushing to the maximum, who may not get things properly, including information about the person’s position,” said Sarah Saldana, who held the position of ICE director during the Obama administration. “All of this takes some time and effort, and this pressure on the numbers – except whether or not the task is done – is concerned or not.”
White House officials say the measures taken by the administration are necessary.
“Keeping President Trump’s promise to deport illegal foreigners is something that the administration takes seriously,” Abigel Jackson, a spokeswoman for Abyel Jackson, said in a statement. “Violent riots in Los Angeles, including attacks on federal law enforcement agents who carry out basic deportations, emphasize the reason for the importance of removing illegal foreigners.”
Political risks are high: Mr. Trump was washed away for the second time on a platform built around his pledge to eliminate illegal immigration and the promises of collective deportation as soon as he took office.
Since Mr. Trump has returned to his post, more than 200,000 people have been sent in the United States without permission to their home country or a third country, or a small part of 1.4 million people who have faced deportation orders by the end of last year, according to the internal government data obtained by the Times.
Mr. Miller, a strong defender of the tightening of America’s borders, on Fox News in late May, said that ICE will determine a “minimum” target of 3000 daily arrests, numbers that they have not seen before and 10 times the daily arrests during the Biden administration. Since January 21, ICE has arrested more than 100,000 people suspected of illegally in the country, according to the Times.
During a meeting with the agency’s leaders at the end of last month at the ICE headquarters, Mr. Miller reviewed the agency’s arrest rate and discussed ways to photograph it. At some point, the ice leaders encouraged targeting the apparent gang members who have a noticeable tattoo, according to people familiar with his comments.
“He was not setting a specific share on us, but just bypassing numbers and making sure that we use all our resources to take the arrests there,” said Garrett Ripa, head of the Miami ice office, who was at that time a major official supervising the agency’s deportations. He said that Ice officials asked Mr. Miller more resources, such as additional transportation help, to help achieve ambitious goals.
Another official with a direct knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the discussion, said that Mr. Miller asked those in the room whether they believed that they could reach a million deportations this year.
The current and current agency officials say that high expectations have decreased morale in some circles – and a barrel has been established.
“There is a state of constant anxiety,” said Jason Hoser, former ice chief of staff during the Biden administration. “They understand that they are playing Stephen Miller. This is not related to public safety or national security; this is related to the quota number. That’s everything.”
However, some ICE officers said they welcomed the focus of their work.
“It is something that I have invested, so I don’t feel bad,” said Carlos Nunez, a Mushrifa deportation officer in Florida.
He said: “We have so much work that there are not enough hours a day, to be honest with you, just to accomplish it.” “My team, all of these men you see here, work seven days a week, and they work around the clock. I hadn’t had a vacation for several months.”
Mr. Ripa said that many agents are working in interrelated seizures to ensure coverage of the entire week. (Internal Security official said that the use of extended transformations is not new.)
The Times recently accompanied Mr. Nunez and other iceberg officials in Miami while they were carrying out a series of arrests. For several hours, a group of more than 10 officers – which included in some FBI points and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – tracked and arrested a total of three immigrants.
In one case, a man of Honduran, who was a brother of an iceberg when he happened to bring him to work – was arrested – an example of how the agency arrested a side to increase its numbers.
This is the mandate now, Mr. Human said.
He said: “If they are there looking for a goal and they find the goal while he is with other people in the country illegally, they must be detained.” “We are not walking away from the illegal foreigner.”
Miami’s arrests have confirmed one of the main challenges facing ice in strengthening its arrests: It is often the painful and low -off work. The officers spend a wide time to conduct the monitoring, and send many officers to share the site for hours. Sometimes, the title is old or incorrect.
So in recent weeks, ICE has begun to hit workplaces such as clubs, restaurants and factories throughout the country, and implement raids aimed at identifying larger numbers. The officers descended based on the immigration courts, in coordination with the public prosecutors, to arrest migrants who appear on the scheduled court dates.
The agency also requests the public to use a party line to report illegal immigration. In May, the officers arrested five men in a Timur car park based on a phone advice. Video of detention It was published online by ICE with an illustrative label, “When you call our TIP line, listen!”
Mr. Human said that such arrests allowed if there was “reasonable doubt” that someone was illegally in the country.
In some offices, investigators who are usually focused on issues such as human trafficking were asked to help increase the number of numbers. An internal security official, who spoke on the condition that his identity is not disclosed to describe the internal tactics, said that some of the secret agents responsible for investigating sex via the Internet have begun to hold personal meetings with people suspected of prostitution to arrest them for immigration.
The agency has also turned into upper technology solutions. The application of a new appointment for agents and officers allows seeing areas throughout the country with large numbers of people under deportation orders, according to Mr. RIPA and the documents obtained by the Times. It was called an early version of the foreign tracking app, or ATRAC.
The project was launched with the help of members of the Ministry of Governmental efficiency, which was led by billionaire Elon Musk until he left his governmental role last month, according to Mr. Ripa. “I know in the stages of childhood in ATRAC, it was an integral part of it,” said Mr. Ripa. The White House refused to comment on the application.
He said that the program, which can be accessed on mobile phones, is planning the site of migrants who have deportation orders throughout the country, and even allowed officers to run on those who suffer from certain criminal condemnation.
“The heat map shows where there are final orders that can be removed throughout the country. Then this officer can enlarge these areas.”
The app contains information about more than 700,000 people, derived from data not only in ICE, but agencies throughout the government. It includes the FBI. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives office; American Marshall Service; And social security management, according to the documents obtained by the era.
The documents say that the application “will ultimately allow the central management of all priorities of the internal application.” This will include data from the Ministry of Development in Housing and Urban Development, the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services, and the service of internal revenue, according to the documents.
The unification of government data to track migrants through the application comes after Musk has moved strongly to try to take advantage of the information flows kept by different agencies. Job officials have caused objections to efforts that they said violated privacy and security protocols, and the trade unions and the International Energy Agency groups have sued efforts.
Information about each immigrant is available in the app with coordination similar to the baseball card, according to the documents. The officers must score the results of each meeting with a goal.
Despite technical magicians, some ice agents found that the headlines on the map are wrong or ancient, according to the Internal Security Officer.
The agency faces other challenges in societies such as Los Angeles, as the court in 2024 prevents officers who expel doors with the intention of arresting people. An expert of the groups that the government suggests about practice found that such arrests, in which the ice knocks on the door with the intention of arresting the person inside the house, represents more than a quarter of all the residential arrests made by ICE.
In late May, the American lawyer, Bill Essia, the American lawyer to reach the Central Province in California, managed the law enforcement agents in the Ministry of Justice to take over the doors, according to the Times document. A spokesman for Mr. Essayli confirmed the initiative.
There were some signs that the ICE boost was the one that results in results. The Ministry of Internal Security said in a statement during the weekend that Ice “arrested 2000 foreigners daily” last week. Trump administration officials have indicated the numbers as a sign that a campaign was working.
But in recent days, the numbers decreased again, according to the Times. On Thursday, ICE was arrested about 1,400 people. Friday, the total fell to more than 1,200. On Saturday, the number decreased further, to about 700.
Mr. Human remained unwanted, even amid the protests in Los Angeles.
“We will do this immigration process,” he said in a width hosted by the right -wing activist Laura Loomer. “We’ll do that every day throughout this country, including Los Angeles will not prevent us, so I think this game.”
Michael H. Killerand Albert Sunand Alison was not and Zolan Kanno-Yungs The reports contributed.