How ICE agents track down and arrest immigrants

Two immigration officers parked near the house long before dawn. Their target was a Mexican convicted of drunk driving in 2015. He appeared on the street early in the morning.

“I’ll stop the car,” the officer said.

“I’m right behind you,” said another and ordered the driver of the car to get out of the car.

But the person they stopped was not the one they were looking for. However, he was also in the country illegally, so he was arrested.

The arrest last week near San Diego shows that the promise of President Donald Trump to deport millions of illegal immigrants to the United States would be extremely difficult to implement, perhaps even impossible. For ICE agents, finding illegal immigrants is a laborious and not always successful task.

The arrest of only one immigrant often requires several days of observation.

On the subject: What if an immigration agent knocks on your door

At the same time, ICE has a limited budget and a shortage of places to detain people. Additionally, more and more law enforcement agencies, especially in major cities, are refusing to assist ICE as part of the growing “sanctuary city” movement, further slowing arrests of illegal aliens.

ICE tactics are in the spotlight amid immigration raids in 10 cities. On Monday, Trump said that the operation was successful, although in these cities there were no signs of a large-scale operation.

During a recent operation in San Diego, officers made 20 arrests in five days. They wore bulletproof vests with “ICE” on their backs and used several unmarked off-road vehicles, immediately ordering people in custody to turn off their telephones so that family and friends could not track their movements.

It is estimated that 11 millions of people are in the US illegally, including 525 000 people have deportation orders and are considered fugitives from justice. The fugitives include 2000 people who must be arrested during immigration raids announced by Trump.

According to officials, ICE operations aimed at people with a criminal past in the US lead to the arrest of about 30% of immigrants, as well as to the detention of an unknown number of people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to ICE Acting Director Matthew Albens, ICE operations against families were even less successful, as they covered only about 10 percent.

ICE officials do not have warrants that would allow them to enter homes, a fact that immigrant advocates successfully advertised, encouraging people not to open the doors of their homes. For security reasons, officers in San Diego stopped knocking and talking, and instead waited until people left home.

On the subject: What if an immigration agent knocks on your door

It is much cheaper and more efficient for ICE to pick up people in local jails when they are arrested for non-immigration offenses. But a series of laws in “sanctuary” cities have sharply limited cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration authorities.

Before the raid in San Diego, ICE agents had to make room for illegal immigrants. The agency, which made about 160 000 arrests during the previous fiscal year, has record-breaking 53 000 people in content centers.

Therefore, the immigration authorities used hotels where families were kept waiting for them to be transferred or deported.

On the subject: Personal experience: what not to do in America

According to Albbens, families from Central America are usually delayed for a week or two while authorities draw up travel documents and a charter or commercial flight to send them home.

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