Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up messaging and legal efforts targeting sanctuary cities in an effort to shame them and mirror the White House’s tone, according to two senior administration officials aware of the change.
ICE is making a lot of noise after years of criticizing how some Democrat-run cities and states known as sanctuary zones, where police will not report illegal immigrants, will not honor the agency’s requests to work together.
Federal officers at ICE are able to look at local arrests and see if a person is legally or illegally in the country. If that person appears to be an illegal immigrant, the officer can request that the local law enforcement agency notify ICE before they are released so ICE can take custody and begin deportation proceedings. Sanctuary zones release illegal immigrants after they make bail or serve time in jail, including those with criminal convictions, without notifying ICE.
ICE is guided by the same policies that existed under the Obama administration, but it is acting more aggressively at the direction of the Trump White House. The agency’s acting director, Matt Albence, is speaking out more, ICE’s presence on social media has risen, and its retaliatory legal action against sanctuary zones this month is unprecedented.
“I’m more than happy, more than excited the administration is stepping up the game,” former acting ICE Director Tom Homan, who worked a year and a half under Trump, told the Washington Examiner. “I’m glad the administration reached a point of, ‘That’s enough.’ Now, they’re going to step up.”
For the first time ever last week, ICE subpoenaed a local law enforcement office. An ICE spokeswoman wrote in an email Tuesday that, although the agency has taken this type of legal action in the past for information on people it believes were illegally present, those actions were directed at businesses and apartment complexes, not fellow law enforcement agencies.
“What’s new is that ICE has not historically needed to issue these subpoenas to law enforcement agencies,” the spokeswoman wrote in an email.
It is not just ICE taking a tougher approach to sanctuary cities. Political appointees at ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, have spoken out following the recent rape and murder of a 92-year-old New York woman. The suspect is illegally in the country and had been arrested in New York City months before the murder but was released, despite ICE asking to be alerted before he was set free.
“Make no mistake, it is this city’s sanctuary policies that are the sole reason this criminal was allowed to roam the streets freely and end an innocent woman’s life,” Albence said on Jan. 17. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and DHS spokeswoman Heather Swift all joined in, with Swift rebuking New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s defenses.
“Hypocrisy. De Blasio runs & hides behind police b/c he cannot defend his anti-law enforcement policies. Tell me Mr. Mayor: What are you going to tell her family? ‘I could have prevented your loved one’s rape & murder but I decided to provide sanctuary to criminal aliens instead,’” Swift wrote on Twitter.
A senior administration official familiar with the new approach said the November departure of acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan freed up the department leadership to focus on the issue.
“In the absence of McAleenan, who tried to curtail enforcement operations and messaging, DHS and Wolf has been empowered to speak more directly to the realities of immigration enforcement and illegal sanctuary city practices,” the official wrote in a text.
An “ICE Alerts” Twitter page that sat unused for more than five years was reborn in late 2019 and now posts content daily. The page is filled with “wanted” ads that, in addition to listing the person’s name, picture, and criminal history, also shames the jail or city that ignored ICE’s request.
Here is an example of a foreign national with an active ICE detainer who has been detained for serious criminal offenses. The only way a person is subject to an ICE detainer is if they are handcuffed & arrested for a crime committed in the local community. https://t.co/RfYfSU5wSD pic.twitter.com/5KB79CdOYR
— ICE Alerts (@ICEAlerts) January 21, 2020
On top of the public campaign to shame New York City officials, ICE held a press conference in New York where Albence attempted to further castigate New York officials for not turning nine criminal immigrants over to ICE.
ICE has also put a higher focus on publicizing the number of convicted illegal immigrants released from jails in major cities. ICE has called out in press releases Ohio’s Franklin County Sheriff’s Office for letting 29 people back onto the streets in November and Chicago’s Cook County for ignoring more than 1,000 requests to detain people last year.
