Ruses by immigration agents under fire as illegals roundups grow

Use of ruses by immigration agents is under fire in LA and around the nation

By Joel Rubin

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES - During a nationwide operation this month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a team of ICE agents in Los Angeles approached the house of a man targeted for deportation.

“Good morning, police,” one agent announced in the predawn darkness.

A man opened the door moments later.

“Good morning. How you doing? I’m a police officer. We’re doing an investigation,” the agent said.

The exchange, captured on a video released publicly by ICE, seemed routine. But it has reignited long-simmering objections from immigrant rights attorneys and advocates, who say the scene illustrates unethical - and in some cases, illegal - ruses ICE agents have used for years, portraying themselves as officers from local police departments to ensnare people or fool them into revealing the whereabouts of family members.

The use of the tactic, critics said, is particularly egregious in heavily immigrant cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, where police and elected officials have tried for decades to distinguish their cops from federal immigration agents, in an effort to convince immigrants living illegally in their cities that they can interact with local police without fear of deportation. The practice of using ruses predates the Trump administration. But the president’s announcement of his intent to dramatically increase the number of people ICE apprehends for deportation has increased concerns by immigrant advocates that the tactic will grow even more prevalent.

“There is something fundamentally unfair about ICE exploiting local and state policies that are trying to improve public safety by promoting immigrants’ trust in law enforcement,” said Frances Miriam Kreimer, senior attorney at Dolores Street Community Services in San Francisco.

Kreimer is challenging the legality of a ruse ICE officers used to arrest a client, in which they told the man they were police officers investigating a crime.

Internally, ruses are allowed and encouraged by ICE officials, who describe them in training manuals and policy notices as an effective tool at agents’ disposal for dictating when and how an arrest is made.

Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman, declined to address questions about the use of ruses, saying the agency does not comment on tactics out of concern for agents’ safety and the effectiveness of its operations. The tactics agents use, she said in a statement, “are consistent with their authorities under federal law and in accordance with the Constitution.”

Ruses and other types of deceit are used at all levels of law enforcement. Courts have long upheld the right of police, to a point, to mislead suspects during investigations and interrogations.

But the legal questions surrounding the use of ruses by immigration agents are more complicated.

There is nothing illegal about ICE agents simply identifying themselves as police officers while standing outside someone’s front door. However, agents generally are not armed with search or arrest warrants when they try to detain someone on suspicion of being in the country illegally. Without a warrant, they cannot force their way into someone’s home and, instead must receive consent from an adult to enter.

In a few cases in which ICE agents used deception to gain entry and then arrested someone, lawyers have successfully argued the ruses ran afoul of constitutional protections.

In one such case, ICE agents in Texas went to the door of an apartment early one morning in December 2008 and identified themselves as police, in search of a man they suspected of having re-entered the country illegally after being deported. The man’s mother answered their knocks. Fearing that she wouldn’t let them in if they showed her a photo of her son, the agents showed her a photo of another man, according to court records.

After the woman told them the man was not inside, the agents pressed her to allow them in to check. The woman and the agents gave differing accounts in court of whether she consented, but once inside the agents found neither the man in the photo nor the woman’s son. The agents, however, awoke another man, his wife and infant child and inquired about their immigration status and arrested the man for being in the country illegally.

The judge in the case found that even if the woman did agree to allow the agents inside, as they claimed, they had misled her so thoroughly it rendered her consent meaningless and violated the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures. The judge did not allow any statements or other evidence the agents gathered in the house to be used against the man in his trial.