Top Democrats from the House Judiciary and House Homeland committees are demanding answers regarding the Trump administration’s plan to have “the SWAT team of the Border Patrol” assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in mass raids across a number of major U.S. cities, saying "The committees have serious concerns over the utility of engaging these highly militarized units, which were never intended for routine immigration enforcement activities, in densely populated metropolitan areas.”
The letter called on acting Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf to provide lawmakers with “a full briefing” on the proposed raids within a week, which will reportedly target San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit, and Newark—all cities with significant Latino and immigrant communities.
The New York Times reported last week that as many as 100 members of Customs and Border Protection’s “elite tactical unit known as BORTAC” would be deployed to assist ICE in separating families: “With additional gear such as stun grenades and enhanced Special Forces-type training, including sniper certification, the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records.”
This is unnecessary and a politically motivated show of force to harass communities, lawmakers including Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler, Homeland Security chair Bennie Thompson, Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship chair Zoe Lofgren, and Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations chair Kathleen Rice said. “This appears to be yet another retaliatory move aimed at cities that have opted to implement immigration policies with which the administration does not agree.”
Lawmakers further cited the administration’s blocking New Yorkers from Trusted Traveler Programs in recent weeks, as well as a plan last year where “ICE and CBP were coordinating to transport and release detainees from facilities across the country into communities represented by the president’s political adversaries. Tactics such as these, which appear to be politically motivated and not grounded in national security, are unacceptable and do nothing more than punish residents and instill fear in communities,” the lawmakers continued.
ICE’s raids often result in sweeps of people with no criminal record, and sometimes even people who weren’t a target at all but got detained because they were there at the time, which ICE crassly refers to as a “collateral arrest.” In 2017, ICE arrested a Dreamer during a raid targeting his dad, even though his status is supposed to protect him from deportation. Not only did ICE keep him detained for weeks, the agency was called out in court for making up gang ties in order to justify trying to deport him.
Earlier this week, Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey called on the administration to halt the upcoming raids entirely, writing “The BORTAC deployment to Boston and other cities is unnecessary, unwelcome, and dangerous. But the specter of heavily armed, military-like personnel in our cities will accomplish one thing: provoke fear. Administration officials have reportedly said the BORTAC members are expected to ‘stand by as a show of force.’”