Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have begun taking illegal immigrants into custody at airports nationwide in an effort to increase arrests, according to a new report.
ICE has linked up with another Department of Homeland Security agency, the Transportation Security Administration, to put deportation officers at security checkpoints where travelers who have failed to leave the United States before their visa expired can be encountered, detained, and possibly arrested and put in immigrant detention facilities, ABC News reported late Tuesday.
ICE officers have arrested visa overstayers at airports across nine states, including California and Virginia. Immigration lawyers told ABC News that ICE was targeting people who travel within the U.S.
The move is the latest effort by the Trump administration to speed up the rate of arrests as the White House continues its mass deportation operation. ICE officer have arrested more than 600,000 illegal immigrants during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to data provided by the DHS.
The documents obtained by ABC News did not specify when the airport details began but show that 27 people have been arrested so far.
ICE officers were detailed to various major U.S. airports earlier this spring as the DHS’s longest-ever government shutdown prompted TSA employees to call out of shifts. ICE officers were paid during the shutdown, unlike TSA employees.
ICE ARRESTED TWO PASTORS WHO OVERSTAYED THEIR RELIGIOUS VISAS. CUELLAR HAD THEM RELEASED FROM CUSTODY
Across the U.S.-Mexico border, airports have Border Patrol agents who assist TSA in case security screeners come across a traveler who may have crossed the southern border and is attempting to board a flight without valid legal documents.
TSA officers are not law enforcement personnel and do not have the authority to make arrests. Local and state police on site at TSA checkpoints cannot enforce federal immigration laws, leaving it to ICE or other federal immigration agencies as the only ones that can make arrests in that context.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
