ICE Chief Doubles Down On Arresting Undocumented People With No Criminal History

Yahoo

3 days ago

President Donald Trump once promised to focus on the 'worst of the worst' as he sought to ramp up immigrant deportations, but a recent interview from his acting ICE chief underscored just how far the administration has departed from that vow.
ICE is doubling down on arresting undocumented immigrants without criminal histories, Todd Lyons, the acting head of the federal body, told CBS's Camilo Montoya-Galvez in an exclusive interview.
'Under this administration, we have opened up the whole aperture of the immigration portfolio,' he said. 'If we encounter someone that isn't here in the country legally, we will take them into custody.'
That approach marks a sharp break from the policies of the Biden administration, which directed agents to apprehend undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds, those who posed a national security threat and those who had entered the U.S more recently, CBS notes. It's also counter to claims that the Trump administration once made about focusing on those with serious criminal records, and prompted sharp blowback as ICE agents have targeted everyone from a high school student driving to sports practice to immigrants attending routine court hearings.
Of the roughly 100,000 deportations ICE has documented between January 1 and June 24, about 70,000 involved a person with a criminal conviction, a CBS review of internal government data found.
And just a small fraction of those who faced criminal convictions did so for violent offenses, Montoya-Galvez noted. (Living in the U.S. without documentation is a civil offense and not a criminal offense, Vanity Fair notes.)
'We can't look at it just based on violence,' Lyons said in the CBS interview.
A July Axios review also determined that noncriminal ICE arrests increased in June, and that 'people without criminal charges or convictions made up an average of 47% of daily ICE arrests' in the early portion of that month.
Lyons claimed in the interview that deporting immigrants who are 'the worst of the worst' was still a chief priority for the administration, and DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lyons also outlined other ways that ICE will ramp up enforcement as it receives a staggering funding infusion from Republicans' recent tax bill, which will make it the highest funded federal law enforcement agency in the U.S.
The agency will continue workplace raids, despite the concerns that have been raised about racial profiling and the trauma they've caused for immigrant communities. It will also penalize companies that hire undocumented immigrants, he said.
'We're focusing on these American companies that are actually exploiting these laborers,' Lyons said.
Lyons noted, too, that agents will continue to wear masks during enforcement actions, due to concerns for their privacy and personal safety, a move that has garnered criticism for shielding officers from accountability and inspiring fear in immigrants who are approached by them.
'I'm not a proponent of the masks; however, if that's a tool that the men and women of ICE use to keep themselves and their families safe, then I'll allow it,' he said.
Such moves come as the president has reportedly set a goal of a million deportations by the end of this year, one which Lyons said was 'possible' to achieve as ICE's sweeping and controversial tactics continue unabated.
'We hear a lot about the administration deporting the worst of the worst. And as far as we can tell from all available data up to this point, the data has not really supported that,' Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University, told ABC News in July.
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