The ICEmen cometh
Reports surfacing about
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency this past week seem more like an
episode of Law and Order than real-life
events, but the nightmarish
stories of armed, warrantless raids of the homes of civil immigrants are
nonetheless true. The study analyzing over 700 arrest reports in New York and
New Jersey was released Wednesday by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s
Immigration Justice Law Clinic, in league with several law enforcement experts
including Nassau County’s police commissioner.
The raids were intended
to focus on dangerous criminals, the New York Times
reported, but more often than not, victims were Latinos with immigration
violations, legal residents or even full citizens who found themselves held by
force in their own homes while federal agents rummaged through the house
seeking incriminating documents.
Most of the time, the
report suggested, the raids seemed to be an issue of racial profiling — 87
percent of “collateral” arrests in New Jersey were of Latinos, as were 94
percent on Long Island.
“If any local law enforcement agency in the nation
were involved in these types of widespread constitutional violations it would
prompt a federal investigation,” said Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau police
commissioner who aided in the report. He noted that these federal immigration
officials weren’t doing a very good job “play[ing] by the same rules as every
other law enforcement officer.”
Judging by an email written by a federal agent in
Connecticut (obtained through a Freedom of Information request), accusations
that ICE is treating its raids like a series of games is hardly an
exaggeration. The email, sent to a state trooper regarding an upcoming set of
raids in New Haven, read: “We have 18 addresses — so it should be a fun time!
Let me know if you guys can play!”
Some agents, the Times reported, have even arrived at
the target houses with cowboy hats
and automatic weapons.
The contrast between the agent’s gleeful email and
the official one sent out by the agency is disconcerting.
"The men and women of I.C.E. are sworn to uphold
the laws of our nation,” the email said. “We do so professionally, humanely and
with an acute awareness with the impact enforcement has on the individuals we
encounter. While I.C.E. prioritizes our efforts by targeting fugitives who have
demonstrated a threat to national security or public safety, we have a clear
mandate to pursue all immigration fugitives.”
The results of these “humane” dealings, however, are
disturbing: in one case, the Times described, immigration agents entered the
home of legal residents from Guatemala and their American-born 9-year-old son,
threatening the family with guns while the boy’s mother was in the shower.
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