U.S. immigration enforcement officers have been told by higher-ups to increase the number of arrests they make, even if that means detaining what officials refer to as “collaterals.”
The ramp-up in arrests was set to begin last weekend, according to reporting in The Guardian from José Olivares. He says weekends are usually a slower time for immigration arrests. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Your story quotes emails from senior ICE officials urging rank-and-file officers to quote, “turn the creative knob up to 11” when it comes to making arrests.
Can you talk about that directive? What do we think it means?
José Olivares: That’s right. So these emails came on Saturday, May 31. And it was top-level ICE management officials instructing their officers to essentially increase the arrest numbers.
I think generally weekends tend to be a slower day for ICE enforcement in general. So they were really pressuring officers to increase the number of arrests throughout the weekend.
And the emails are pretty jarring because in one in particular, there’s one ICE manager who says, “we complained for the last four years about not being allowed to do our job. Now the time has come for us to step up.”
But what’s happening here is a significant escalation by the Trump administration directing ICE management to really increase the number of arrests taking place. Now, the Trump Administration has said that they want to arrest 3,000 people per day, which would end up being 1 million people per year, which is a significant escalation. But there are a lot of questions that are taking place here.
When it comes to the question of arresting what the administration calls “collaterals,” this then opens up Pandora’s box, dealing with Fourth Amendment issues, warrantless arrests – arresting people without warrants. [There are] a lot of concerns by advocates [about] potential racial profiling and discrimination, and also the possibility [that] within this dragnet involving and arresting U.S. citizens as the numbers continue to to increase.
Well, you mentioned the weekend and how things tend to be a little slower on the weekend. I guess I’m surprised by that. I mean, is it just the number of officers on duty or is it the tactics they take? And is this directive really trying to change that?
That’s right. So typically a lot of the ICE enforcement does happen during the weekdays because that’s when most officers want to be working – officers wanting to take the weekend off and be with families, etc. And so a lot of the enforcement actions do take place on weekdays.
And so this recent pressure over the weekend is something that is a little bit newer for the administration. They are pressuring ICE officers to work on weekends, work extended hours, just to kind of ramp up those numbers as much as possible to make these sort of quotas that the Trump administration is [asking for.]
But what’s interesting to note about everything that we’re seeing going on is that we are also seeing a bit of a divide within ICE itself because of this. We’re seeing top management officials who really believe in the mission of the Trump administration – really believe the mission of mass deportation that the Trump campaign ran on.
But we’re seeing this divide within the agency itself when you have overworked officers, you have special agents that have been delegated to do this immigration enforcement work that are starting to kind of be a little upset and be a little frustrated because they’re saying, “we’re being stretched thin. 3,000 people per day is not really doable. We’re getting a little bit upset about this.”
The other question that comes into play when it comes to these emails that we saw over the weekend is this question of warrantless arrests, of arresting what they call “collaterals.” And again, this brings up some significant Fourth Amendment issues.
A lot of this has been challenged in court. There are current court processes going on that are challenging ICE’s arrest of people without warrants. And so I think that’s something that we’re going to continue to be seeing as the Trump administration continues with this push.
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These directives are pretty new, just sent over this past weekend. Do we know if more people were detained by ICE officers after the emails? And if the directive is still in place?
The directives are certainly still in place. It’s difficult to understand and to know exactly how the numbers keep changing.
I think under the first few weeks of the Trump administration we saw the Department of Homeland Security very publicly published numbers and saying, “we arrested X number of people today, we arrested Y number of people today.” But I think it’s hard now because the Department of Homeland Security isn’t publishing those numbers as frequently as they were before.
And it’s also just hard to kind of know and really fact check an agency, the Department of Homeland Security, that really has been pushing a lot of propaganda forward, has been putting out falsehoods, has been putting out and promoting lies, has been actively defying Supreme Court orders.
So I think the numbers that do come out – when they do come, which is rare – I think it’s important to kind of take those with a grain of salt and be a little bit critical and try to fact check those as much as possible and backtrack. And there’s some really great researchers who are independently trying to verify arrest numbers, detention numbers throughout the country.
[Note: After this conversation was recorded, new arrest numbers were reported by CBS News, indicating that some 100,000 people have been arrested on immigration charges since the beginning of the Trump administration.]
Well, and I don’t know if you’ve got an answer to this one, but have you heard from the Trump administration if they responded to your reporting?
What’s interesting is the Trump administration continues to push this question and push this point that they’re arresting what they call “criminal aliens, illegal aliens, criminals, criminals,” but what this reporting is showing is that for ICE, now everyone is fair game.
I think it’s important to note, and I think is really, really important to underscore, that being undocumented in the U.S. – being in the U.S. without proper authorization – it’s not a crime. It’s a civil offense, it’s civil infraction. Crossing the border illegally, or if you get deported and then you cross again, those are crimes. But just simply being undocumented in the U.S. is a civil offense, it is not a crime.
And so what we’re seeing is this push to arrest people without warrants, without active warrants that just happen to be in a place where other people are being arrested. And so that does raise a lot of questions for people who may not have any sort of criminal background or any sort criminal history that are being rounded up in this.
And so when I reached out to the Trump administration, when I reached out to Department of Homeland Security, they did respond with a very sarcastic response, but essentially continuing to promote this idea that they’re only going after criminals when, in fact, just by the very nature of warrantless arrests, of collateral arrests, it just shows that they are not. They’re also targeting people without any sort of criminal backgrounds.
