Under President Trump, ICE is despised and divided

By Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES —— In May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were spotted in Union Station. Their appearance triggered a phone call to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office.

An LAPD officer reached out to David Marin, the director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, for ICE in L.A.

Marin told the officer that the agents had merely gone there to get coffee.

“I get calls regularly,” Marin said earlier this month. “It was not like that at all up until this administration.”

Across the nation, ICE has never seemed more visible as anger continues over the separation of families under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy. Protesters have rallied across the U.S, demanding that the agency be abolished — calls that have been echoed by politicians. This month, WikiLeaks published the identities and information of more than 9,000 supposed current and former ICE employees.

That has sparked frustration within the agency. This week, the Texas Observer reported that 19 special agents in charge at ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, branch wrote a letter proposing restructuring ICE and creating two separate agencies.

“HSI’s investigations have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens, instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross border crimes impacting our communities and national security,” said the letter, sent to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “Furthermore, the perception of HSI’s investigative independence is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO’s civil immigration enforcement.”

The mission of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division is to “identify, arrest, and remove aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally or otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts.” While ERO might be the most known, it is not the only division in the agency.

Homeland Security Investigations, which includes more than 6,000 agents, describes itself as an investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security and a vital asset in “combating criminal organizations illegally exploiting America’s travel, trade, financial and immigration systems.”

The missions of Enforcement Removal Operations and Homeland Security Investigations have been “erroneously combined,” the letter said. Many jurisdictions continue to refuse to work with HSI, “because of a perceived linkage to the politics of civil immigration.” Other jurisdictions have agreed to partner with HSI, but only if the “ICE” name is not included in “public facing information.”

“HSI is constantly expending resources to explain the organizational differences to state and local partners, as well as to Congressional staff, and even within our own department — DHS (Department of Homeland Security),” the letter stated. “The development of two new effective agencies is a positive step for the department, as part of the progression that ICE has experienced since its inception fifteen years ago.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not comment on the letter.

Recently, “Occupy ICE” protests have sprung up across the nation. In Portland, protesters were able to shut down an ICE facility for at least a week.

This week, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said he plans to introduce legislation to eliminate the agency. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who beat Rep. Joe Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary, ran on a platform that called for the abolition of ICE.

ICE “fully respects the constitutional rights of all people to peacefully express their opinions,” ICE said. “That being said, ICE remains committed to performing its immigration enforcement mission consistent with federal law and agency policy.”

The growing anger directed at the agency prompted Trump to call out on Twitter what he described as “shameless attacks on our courageous law enforcement officers.”

“Extremist Democrat politicians have called for the complete elimination of ICE. Leftwing Activists are trying to block ICE officers from doing their jobs and publicly posting their … home addresses — putting these selfless public servants in harm’s way,” Trump wrote. “These radical protesters want ANARCHY — but the only response they will find from our government is LAW AND ORDER!”

On a recent morning, fugitive operations teams with ERO fanned out throughout the L.A. area, looking for “criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants and immigration fugitives.” When the agents stopped for coffee at a Starbucks in Huntington Park, they noted that the negative opinion of the agency had recently intensified.

“Even the cops don’t like us anymore, because they’re listening to the news also,” said an agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “‘Oh, you guys are just separating families.’”

As the agents prepared to leave, a Huntington Park police car pulled into the parking lot. Someone had probably seen the agents, Marin said, and called the police.