Trust in ICE plummets, even when agents target serious criminals

ICE officers raided Compton, targeting immigrants convicted of theft, child abuse and drug dealing.

There were no protesters. There are no whistles to alert targets to the officers’ presence. No face mask. In some cases, residents opened their doors to allow officers into their homes. One man thanked them for not arresting him in front of his children.

The operation in the Los Angeles area ended with the arrest of 162 people, including a Mexican citizen convicted of rape and a Salvadoran citizen convicted of premeditated murder. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said nearly 90 percent of people arrested had criminal convictions.

It was June 2018, more than a year into Donald Trump’s first term as president. More than seven years later, it seems nearly impossible to carry out the same operation in Los Angeles or other U.S. cities without attracting the attention of angry mobs and, at times, requiring multiple officers at federal agencies to detain a single target.

In the years since Trump’s first term, ICE and the government’s immigration enforcement apparatus have expanded far beyond raids on known criminals or suspects. Immigrants with no criminal record, even legal residents and U.S. citizens, are increasingly being stopped and sometimes arrested.

Uncertainty about who was being targeted fueled community protests and rapid-response mobilizations, even as authorities said they were targeting convicted criminals; This reflects the widening gap between how execution is defined and how it is experienced. This gap has become visible in most places.

Sightings of ICE or other federal agents in recent months have attracted crowds of protesters, legal observers and community organizers. In many cases, residents say they cannot distinguish between targeted enforcement actions against child molesters, human traffickers and other serious criminals and broader enforcement actions that respond to the mere presence of agents whose roles and authority are no longer clearly understood.

The Trump administration’s hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, often indiscriminately targeting people in neighborhoods, has damaged the reputation of immigration enforcement agencies, including ICE and the Border Patrol, like never before, experts say. And it inspired a mass resistance movement that resulted in Americans being shot by federal immigration officers. Last month, two U.S. citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti — were shot and killed by ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.

The deadly shootings have forced Trump to recalibrate his immigration enforcement tactics, in part by eliminating Border Patrol Command. Gregory Bovino, who first launched aggressive raids in California and brought in border policy advisor Tom Homan.

“I’m not here because the federal government has done this job perfectly,” Homan said at Thursday’s news conference. “Nothing is perfect and everything can be improved. And what we’re working on is making this operation safer, more efficient by the book.”

He said street operations in Minnesota would “reduce” if agents were given access to local jails and agents focused on specific targets.

“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations – targeted,” he added. “This has traditionally been the case, and we will continue to do so and improve upon it, prioritizing public safety threats.”

An internal memo reviewed by Reuters It showed that ICE officers stationed in the state were instructed to avoid contact with “agitators” and target only “aliens with criminal backgrounds.”

Even as the Trump administration rolls back aggressive tactics by ICE and Border Patrol to focus more on known criminals, experts question whether too much damage has been done to their reputations.

“The agency’s brand is becoming very toxic,” said John Sandweg, who headed ICE under President Obama. “This will impact the agency for years to come. It will take a long time to rebuild that trust.”

Another former ICE official, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said he could tell the agency focuses on criminals and does not conduct random screenings.

“We’ve always said for years: ‘We don’t have the resources to go after everyone, so we’ll focus on the worst of the worst,'” he said. “They can’t say that now. They’re still trying to do it, but it’s being overshadowed by Home Depot and car washes and other things and the heavy-handed tactics of the Border Patrol. Now it’s leading to shootings and all this other stuff. It’s just terrible.”

In Willowbrook, an unincorporated neighborhood in South Los Angeles just a few blocks from Compton city limits, federal agents found themselves pinned down by the angry mob that recorded them last week. Two people carried a banner saying “ICE/Soldiers, get off our streets.”

Agents were there to arrest a man they said was “involved in human trafficking” and for whom they had received a final deportation order. They claimed the man had been arrested twice before for domestic violence. Homeland Security officials later said the man used his vehicle to ram federal agent vehicles in an attempt to evade arrest, prompting one agent to open fire.

But as word spread that the operation targeted a suspected criminal living in the country illegally, most residents shrugged it off. They said federal authorities made false claims against others they arrested or shot, including labeling Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists.

“They showed us that they can’t be trusted,” said Rosa Enriquez, 39, while holding a Mexican flag.

Similar scenes occurred across the country. This month, a journalist wrote: video A group of agents he identified as working for ICE were sent to St. He calls for a driver to honk during an operation in St. Paul, Minn.

“We are here to arrest a criminal who is sexually abusing a child, and you are here honking your horn,” the agent said. “This is the person you are protecting. Crazy.”

“Go away. You’re lying!” a woman shouts.

Homeland Security touted the arrest of criminals across the country. The “worst of the worst arrests” in Los Angeles this month included a man convicted of second-degree murder, another with involuntary manslaughter and another with multiple convictions for drunken driving and disorderly conduct, according to the agency.

“We will not allow rioters or agitators to slow us down in eliminating murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and terrorists,” Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

But experts say public opinion is clearly witnessing a shift in who is being targeted.

In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly directed senior ICE officials to go beyond their target lists and make arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores as agents sought to increase their daily arrest count to 3,000.

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino (center) walks with federal agents toward the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The following month, Border Patrol agents led by Bovino were tackling car wash workers, arresting street vendors and chasing day laborers in Los Angeles.

“The pressure of these numbers on enforcement agencies and the mobilization of the entire government and other law enforcement agencies, well beyond traditional ICE and CBP, created pressures that led to overintervention,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, is the agency that includes ICE and Border Patrol.

At the peak of arrests in Los Angeles in June, about 75% of people had no criminal convictions. The Times analysis found that in the administration’s first nine months, from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15, about 45% of the more than 10,000 Los Angeles residents arrested in immigration raids had criminal convictions and an additional 14% had pending charges.

In November, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, reported He said 5% of inmates nationwide from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15 were convicted of violent crimes. Most of the detainees convicted were found guilty of indecency, immigration or traffic violations.

“They’ve shown the American people that they’re looking for the worst, and that’s not what’s going on,” said Assemblyman Mike A. Gipson (D-Carson), who represents the district where the latest shooting occurred in Los Angeles. “We have seen all over America harassing, killing, assassinating not only citizens, but also people who were not arrested, who did not fit the picture they painted or the portrayals they painted of the American people.

“When you turn on the news right now, you see trust has completely disappeared. We don’t trust the White House, we don’t trust ICE, and people are afraid because trust has disappeared.”

Santa Maria Councilwoman Gloria Soto echoed that sentiment, in part because she has seen raids in the Central Coast town.

“That’s part of the frustration,” Soto said. “There is no transparency. No information is shared before or after the implementation of these sanctions.”

“We know that people are being caught who don’t have a criminal record, whose only quote-unquote crime was either having an expired visa or passing without the required immigration documentation, so it makes it really difficult for me as an elected official to trust what this agency is doing because so far there’s been no communication,” he said.

Sandweg said the challenges ICE officers face are concentrated in cities targeted by surge operations, such as Minneapolis. He said officers across the country had carried out operations but “they had not sparked the same degree of controversy”.

People attend a memorial service for Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

“We’re at a point in Minneapolis right now where if agents are going to go after someone who has a very serious criminal history of violence, they’re probably going to attract watchdogs and a lot of attention,” he said. “The fact that they want to do these operations so publicly, in your face, has created a dynamic that makes it really difficult for agents to do their jobs. … There are these protests that follow agents everywhere they go.”

While there has always been consternation about immigration enforcement, Sandweg said, “The widespread tactics and targeting of people with no criminal record have mobilized people in a way they have never mobilized before.”

“This is toward the point where they’re starting to infiltrate and obstruct operations that most protesters probably don’t oppose — the idea of ​​ICE taking someone off the streets who has a history of violent crime,” he said. “I think it creates an environment that puts officers and the public in danger.”

This week, when word spread that ICE officers were dining at a restaurant in Lynwood, protesters took action. One video shows the crowd jeering as the officers were escorted from the area by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

Lynwood City Councilman Luis Gerardo Cuellar released a video almost immediately. instagram to inform the public.

“This wasn’t ICE, these were… TSA air marshals.”