In the pre-dawn hours yesterday, newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined ICE and other federal agencies for a Bronx raid focused on one detainee, whom Noem said was wanted for kidnapping, assault and burglary. We would think that Secretary Noem would have better uses of her time.
The Trump administration would have you believe that these types of operations are something new, but the federal government has been going after dangerous criminals like that Bronx fellow for a long time. Ironically, every enforcement decision they’ve made has made it less, not more, likely that people with serious criminal records will be targeted.
With the stroke of a pen last week, President Trump axed the prioritization scheme that had put people with serious criminal records at the top of ICE’s enforcement hierarchy, which is another way of saying that the agency is turning its attention away from the very people it claims to be going after.
There’s an obvious tension between claims that they are pursuing the worst of the worst and their reported objective to massively ramp up arrests. The smartest approach is to hone in on the most dangerous immigrant criminals out there.
The only way to resolve this tension is if those high levels of arrests are instead targeting non-dangerous, non-violent people, especially those who are already known to ICE and who in many cases already regularly check in with the agency. Ironically, this means we can expect the agency, under extreme pressure from the White House, to actually go after the people who are least trying to hide and most trying to comply with the law.
The ICE unit that conducted the operation, known as Homeland Security Investigations, has long been the unit that focuses on things like trafficking, child abuse material, counterfeiting and other solidly criminal investigations as opposed to civil immigration enforcement.
Yet in one of his orders from last week, the president directed the team to shift its focus to immigration as well, a development that, to put it bluntly, might best be celebrated by child abusers, scammers and others who will benefit from diverted attention. ICE officials have reportedly already internally raised concerns that new policies help criminals.
So, we must ask, who is being made safer here, exactly? What crimes are being prevented by an ICE striving to boost arrest numbers of anyone and everyone — a situation ripe for mistakes like detaining documented immigrants and U.S. citizens, which has and will continue to happen under a chaotic attempt at a ramp-up — and taking focus off actual criminals? Or maybe there’s no difference, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says everyone here without proper immigration papers are criminals.
Does the new secretary of Homeland Security really have nothing better to do but fly to New York for the arrest of criminal suspects? It’s all part of the show, less about law enforcement than appearances.
The vast, vast majority of the millions of undocumented immigrants have committed no violent crimes or even nonviolent crimes. Yes, chase down the bad guys, but find a way to bring the rest of the undocumented out of the shadows and onto the path to fully legal status.
