15 Year veteran ICE agent: “We’re trusted again.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/us/ice-immigrant-deportations-trump.html


Immigration Agents Discover New Freedom to Deport Under Trump

By NICHOLAS KULISH, CAITLIN DICKERSON and RON NIXONFEB. 25, 2017


In Virginia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waited outside a church shelter where undocumented immigrants had gone to stay warm. In Texas and in Colorado, agents went into courthouses, looking for foreigners who had arrived for hearings on other matters.

At Kennedy International Airport in New York, passengers arriving after a five-hour flight from San Francisco were asked to show their documents before they were allowed to get off the plane.

The Trump administration’s far-reaching plan to arrest and deport vast numbers of undocumented immigrants has been introduced in dramatic fashion over the past month. And much of that task has fallen to thousands of ICE officers who are newly emboldened, newly empowered and already getting to work.


“The discretion has come back to us; it’s up to us to make decisions in the field,” a 15-year veteran in California said. “We’re trusted again.”