A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday rejected a report that said ICE is secretly using moles inside the city government to gather intelligence and prosecute people who are in the country illegally.
“As far as ICE is concerned, we have nobody here that’s working with us or giving us information,” the New York-based official told the Washington Examiner.
The official said it would “make our lives easier” if ICE had this kind of help, especially since Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island all operate as “sanctuary cities,” or jurisdictions where local politicians have told police and sheriff’s departments not to honor ICE requests to detain illegal immigrants.
City Councilman Francisco Moya, a Democrat representing Queens, said Sunday he has received 10 anonymous letters from someone claiming to be part of an underground group of people employed in the city’s courts and other municipal offices who are covertly helping ICE.
Moya told the New York Daily News in a recent interview he thinks he is being targeted because of his recent op-ed on an immigration-related issue.
The unknown constituent claimed to have a few dozen members in the secret society’s New York chapter and said it has a “direct association with ICE,” including a “liaison rep.” The group also claimed to have a “well-placed mole in City Hall.”
New York, San Francisco, and other jurisdictions around the country have refused to work with ICE to protest the agency’s effort to enforce immigration laws, and President Trump has tried to withhold federal grants to cities that don’t cooperate for federal officials on immigration.
