ICE’S TACTICSStates, Cities Are Hard-Pressed to Fight Violent ICE Arrest Tactics
State leaders who want to curb the increasingly violent arrest tactics of immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere are struggling to push back. Potential approaches include state civil rights laws and a refusal to cooperate.
State leaders who want to curb the increasingly violent arrest tactics of immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere are struggling to push back.
They’ve promised civil rights legislation that could offer alleged victims another route to courts, ordered up official tribunals to gather video and other records, or asked cities to refuse requests to cooperate with raids. But for the most part, states looking for concrete ways to push back find themselves largely hamstrung.
Violence in immigration enforcement is on the rise. A federal immigration agent’s killing of Renee Good in Minnesota on Jan. 7 was one of half a dozen shootings since December. An immigrant’s death in a Texas detention facility this month was ruled a homicide. And detention deaths last year totaled at least 31, a two-decade peak and more than the previous four years combined.
There also have been dozens of cases in the past year of agents using dangerous and federally banned arrest maneuvers, such as chokeholds, that can stop breathing.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in masks and tactical vests have been recorded firing pepper spray into the faces of protesters, shattering car windows with little warning, punching and kneeing people pinned face down on the ground, using battering rams on front doors, and questioning people of color about their identities.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended many recorded incidents as legitimate uses of force against dangerous people. And some Republican state lawmakers have said they’ll work to bolster ICE’s work within their borders.
Some lawmakers, legal experts and immigrant advocates worry about whether a lack of oversight from the federal government and the weak positions of state governments could give rise to even more violence as President Donald Trump continues his push to arrest immigrants who are living illegally in the United States.
Previous administrations have prioritized arresting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who also have criminal records, but that isn’t the case in Trump’s second term.
“You can’t go after a murderer and a garden-variety immigration violator like a poor nanny or a poor landscaper with equal emphasis. This administration has abandoned all discretion and all priorities, and you create this narrative that you’re doing this patriotic, godly thing,” said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
