Chicago ICE Director Sam Olson defends immigration actions after touring facility with House Speaker Mike Johnson

CBS News

6 hours ago

The head of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement Chicago field office sat down with CBS News Chicago to defend his agency's deportation mission in the city.
Sam Olson said he understands some of the frustration and fear that families are feeling in this moment and said that extends to his agents as well.
"For sure, right, and I mean the officers do too. They're all human. Like, I'm human, you know," he said. "It's a hard thing. Law enforcement can be a hard job, because we're dealing with people, we're not dealing with things, and they realize it's going to be tough. There are times when you have to arrest a dad and then, you know, the mom and family is there, like, don't think that doesn't have an effect on the officers because it does."
Olson is in charge of the immigration enforcement operation that was previously staffed five days a week. He said they are now sending out 10 to 12 teams a day to make arrests seven days a week.
"We'll look at a chunk of cases and try to find the worst of the worst, and those are the ones we try to target first," Olson said. "In addition to those, right, we have just cases that have final orders of removal already, where an immigration judge has ordered them removed."
CBS News Chicago has heard from people who said a loved one has been arrested without committing any serious crime or being convicted of any serious crime. Our news cameras have also captured people being detained after showing up for an immigration check-in appointment.
Olson said these types of arrests can happen a few different ways. He said the agency prefers to arrest undocumented immigrants upon their release from Cook County Jail, should they be charged with a crime.
"The biggest way it happens here in Illinois, because some of the policies, right, the sanctuary policies that the state has, is that we don't really get notified of, say, if Chicago PD arrests somebody, books them in Cook County Jail, we may know they're in there but then they're prohibited by law from giving us that information," Olson said. "Even if we put a detainer down, they're prohibited from honoring that detainer or calling us when somebody is released, so essentially anybody that is here illegally would get released, and so when they get released, those are the cases that we go after."
An immigration detainer is a request from ICE to federal, state or local law enforcement agencies to notify them as early as possible before releasing an undocumented immigrant from custody, and to hold that undocumented immigrant for up to 48 hours beyond when they'd normally be released so they can be detained by the Department of Homeland Security.
"We'll work up a case like that and then we're going out into the field to look for them," he continued. "And so, when we're out in the field doing that, if we encounter our target and we encounter other people that might just be here illegally, we'll have to arrest those as well."
Olson said there's also a reason his agents are wearing masks, though they should identify themselves.
"They're mandated to identify themselves when they make an arrest," he said. "I think it's unfortunate that a lot of our officers feel they have to wear the masks and that's something that's come down more recently, right. We didn't see that often, and where that's coming from is that there's been officers, thankfully none here yet, but nationwide that are getting doxxed. They're out here doing their jobs and they're getting their pictures taken and they're getting their faces posted with their home addresses."
Earlier in the day, Olson brought U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) on a tour of their offices and holding facility.
"So I saw the holding facilities here," Johnson said afterward. "And what stuck out to me is they need upgrades. This facility was last updated in 2008, so this is long overdue, the technology has changed, and a lot of the facility requirements are not being met because they don't have the funding for it."
Johnson is pushing for a budget bill with $45 billion to expand ICE detention capacity, but there are questions about transparency in that spending and how Americans would be informed about where their tax dollars are going.
"We want to be completely transparent," Johnson said. "The American citizens and taxpayers deserve that, and I could tell you, my visit with personnel here today, the leaders here, they're happy to shine a light, bring in the cameras and show everybody exactly what's happening, to the extent that they're able to do that under given law."
CBS News Chicago asked to join Speaker Johnson and Olson on that tour of the detention facility, but we were not allowed to.