U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents hunt people in the U.S. illegally, some of whom have been here for decades, working and raising families. Under President Trump, who pushes hardline immigration policies, ICE has been exposed to unprecedented criticism, even though officers say they’re doing the same job they did before the election, enforcing U.S. laws that were on the books long before 2016, the Associated Press reports. Agents also have stepped up arrests of people who have no U.S. criminal records. Stories of ICE officers arresting dads and grandmothers that come up in local news reports. Officers are heckled and videotaped. ICE employees have been threatened at their homes, their personal data exposed online. “There is a tension around ‘It could be that somebody could find out what I do and hate me for it or do worse than hate me for it,’” Ronald Vitiello, acting head of the agency, told AP. The agency is monitoring social media and giving employees resources for when they feel threatened.
Most people arrested by ICE go before immigration judges, who decide whether they must be deported. ICE arrested 32,977 people accused of crimes and 20,464 with immigration violations in budget year 2018. There were 105,140 arrests of people with criminal convictions and 158,581 arrests overall. The most frequent criminal conviction was for drunken driving, followed by drug and traffic offenses. In the last budget year of the Obama administration, there were 111,104 arrests overall. Some cities have banished ICE from jails where they could easily pick up immigration violators. ICE officers now do more street operations and say they end up with more “collateral arrests,” people they happen upon who are also in the country illegally. They rarely knock on doors anymore, instead spending hours surveilling and waiting outside. They haunt courthouses.