Show Notes
Should the Trump administration’s immigration control focus more on targeting criminals or on wider sweeps?
In the latest episode of On Background, Susan Crabtree and Eric Eggers interview award-winning immigration reporter Anna Giaritelli from the Washington Examiner. Giaritelli has covered illegal immigration issues and border enforcement for years, even before the surge of migrants that took place under President Joe Biden’s tenure.
Trump has completely reversed the policies and procedures that allowed migrants to enter the country under asylum claims. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) agency, and its Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, have formed the tip of the spear in trying to locate, arrest, and deport those illegal migrants in the country and stop the flow across America’s southern border. But cracks are starting to show.
Giaritelli’s reporting shows growing tensions between those two agencies. “Border Patrol is tasked by Congress with arresting people who come over the nation’s borders between the land ports of entry,” she explains, “where you or I would drive our cars across and go through customs.” By contrast, ICE “is based inside the country. They’re going after people who are in the country illegally, criminal record or not.”
This tension pits DHS secretary Kristi Noem and White House advisor Corey Lewandowski, who are pushing for more arrests, against White House Border Czar Tom Homan, who is trying to temper expectations.
“What I’m told is that Tom is concerned that the Trump administration and the White House are pushing for too many arrests,” she tells Crabtree and Eggers, “which just isn’t possible when you look at the millions of people in the country, the very limited number of deportation officers and places to detain people and such. So that’s clashing right now at this point.”
The tension comes, she says, because “President Trump has pushed ICE since January to ramp up deportations.” This has led to time-consuming work in cases where local police will have arrested an illegal immigrant for a crime but then released him. It’s then up to ICE to locate that person, learn where they work and where best to find them, then make an arrest. “That takes days, sometimes months of planning and tracking. And so, going at it one by one, trying to arrest people, (with fewer than 7,000 ICE agents) is a lot of work.”
This has frustrated Border Patrol agents and senior management, who view ICE as having dropped the ball.
ICE pursues specific people every single time, Giaritelli says. “They might go into a house for this certain person and then make collateral arrests,” she says. In contrast, Border Patrol agents are the ones going to a Home Depot and making multiple arrests.
“When you see the guys in green or camo, that’s Border Patrol,” she says. “Blue and black regular clothing tends to be ICE.”
ICE is not hitting Trump’s goal of 3,000 arrests per day, Giaritelli says. The real number is closer to 1,000 arrests per day. So, Trump “likes that this approach by border patrol is very ‘in your face.’ I’m sure you’ve seen social media videos going up multiple times a day on ICE and Border Patrol’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages. It’s really meant to scare people,” she says. Their goal is to encourage those here illegally to self-deport.
Giaritelli also explained why ICE’s “removal” numbers are not as high as expected – because there are fewer than ever making it across the southern border. “You no longer have people getting released into the country every day by ICE,” she said. The statistics, she said, would previously include “hundreds of thousands of people who came over the border illegally and who were turned back.” Because ICE and CBP are stopping migrants before they cross, however, “it frees up ICE to focus only on sort of the bad apples in the country, but it automatically makes those numbers lower at the end of the day… I don’t think they’ve done a great job messaging to the American public to explain why it’s not higher.”
Giaritelli also recounts her story of having been sexually assaulted while living in Washington, DC in 2020, and her experience with a dysfunctional criminal justice system in DC. She wrote an op-ed describing her experience, and has written a book called Under Assault that will be published in the Spring.
