02/14/2020
Maybe things are about to get hot in Sanctuary Cities. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now deploying U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) tactical units to various Sanctuary Cities to back up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Deportation Officers (DO) while they are making arrests. Notably, ICE SVU, ICE Special Victims Unit (SVU), Special Agents as I pejoratively call ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), will not be backing up ICE ERO.
ICE is divided into two enforcement components, HSI and ERO. ICE SVU is supposed to be doing work-site enforcement, document and benefit fraud, and alien smuggling on the immigration side, and various issues drug smuggling, child porn, and counterfeit manufactured goods on the customs side. However, as I've reported, ICE SVU does not like the immigration issue and considers immigration enforcement beneath them, as expressed by the Dirty 19. Therefore, the ICE SVU will not be backing up their fellow officers at ICE, and ICE ERO had to call for support from Border Patrol Agents (BPA).
Of course, the NYT is all agog, thinking that BPAs don’t know how to execute their mission in an urban environment. That is just a plain lie. The USBP has been enforcing immigration laws in cities and towns since its inception. The USBP has long done city patrol in urban environments large and small; it is called City Patrol and Area Control.
In the days of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Border Patrol would work with INS Special Agents from the Investigations section and Deportation Officers from the Detention and Deportation section in an INS District Office. Usually USBP would do City Patrol, patrolling urban areas and setting up checkpoints, while INS Special Agents and Deportation Officers would do Area Control, which was hitting day labor sites, doing quick raids on employers, and checking green cards on the streets. It was designed to keep illegal aliens on edge and uncomfortable in the United States.
Now, it looks like something like City Patrol and Area Control are back. Something I recommended: raids, sweeps, and checkpoints in Sanctuary Cities on a massive scale.
The Trump administration is deploying law enforcement tactical units from the southern border as part of a supercharged arrest operation in sanctuary cities across the country, an escalation in the president’s battle against localities that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement.
The specially trained officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to boost the enforcement power of local ICE officers, according to two officials who are familiar with the secret operation. Additional agents are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J.
The move reflects President Trump’s persistence in cracking down on sanctuary cities, localities that have refused to cooperate in handing over immigrants targeted for deportation to federal authorities. It comes soon after the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security announced a series of measures that will affect both American citizens and immigrants living in those places.
[Border Patrol Will Deploy Elite Tactical Agents to Sanctuary Cities, by Caitlin Dickerson and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, NYT, February 14, 2020]
It is not clear though if this is a new strategy of more vigorous enforcement as recommended by your humble correspondent or just a prophylactic measure to add muscle to ongoing ICE ERO enforcement given violent resistance by illegal aliens and their criminal allies; resistance that I warned about 3 years to the day. [In The Streets And The Courts, The Left Plans A Coup. But Trump Can Fight Back, February 14, 2017]
However, it appears that only 100 BPAs will be deployed to Sanctuary Cities. I do not know if this is just a start — deploying BORTAC only suggests that this is only an operation to support ERO, rather than to expand enforcement to the Border Patrol specialty, City Patrol.
Lawrence Payne, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, confirmed the agency was deploying 100 officers to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which conducts arrests in the interior of the country, “in order to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national security.”
This statement is, as usual for spokesmen, not designed to illuminate, but to deceive; it is bland and speaks in generalities, but it does not rule out wider enforcement, nor does it advise the public about the campaign of illegal violent resistance by illegal aliens and their supporters that should not be tolerated by President Trump.
But a clearer statement says that the Border Patrol will support ICE ERO, but this, again, does not rule out expanded enforcement.
In sanctuary cities, the BORTAC agents will be asked to support interior officers in run-of-the-mill immigration arrests, the officials said. Their presence could spark new fear in immigrant communities that have been on high alert under the stepped-up deportation and detention policies adopted after Mr. Trump took office.
With 100 BPAs supporting ICE ERO, that could be a test run for a wider enforcement program, including not only interior deployment of the USBP, but ICE SVU should be forced to become engaged with immigration enforcement in Sanctuary Cities. The Dirty 19 must be forced into immigration enforcement on a broad scale in urban areas. Permanent redeployment of the Border Patrol to previously longstanding interior stations that were shut down by George Bush.
Kudos though to Ken The Knife. This is a good start, now follow up with raids, sweeps, checkpoints, and work-site enforcement.
This shows imagination, and perhaps that Stephen Miller and Ken Cuccinelli are reading VDare and Federale!
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