In letter to Kirstjen Nielsen, 19 agents say immigration crackdown makes it difficult to investigate significant national security issues

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Nineteen senior investigators at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have called for the law enforcement agency, responsible for both national security investigations and deportation of undocumented migrants, to be disbanded.

In a letter to the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, the 19 agents express concern that Donald Trump’s hardline crackdown on undocumented migrants has made it harder for them to conduct effective investigations into significant national security issues.

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The sprawling federal law enforcement agency, which employs more than 20,000 people, is split into two primary divisions: enforcement and removal operations (ERO) focused on deportations, and homeland security investigations (HSI) focused on national security investigations into areas including drugs and arms trafficking.

The 19 investigators, all from the HSI division, wrote that their investigations, “have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens, instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross border crimes impacting our communities and national security”.

The letter continues: “Furthermore, the perception of HSI’s investigative independence is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO’s civil immigration enforcement.” It adds that certain local jurisdictions in America have refused to work with HSI because of a “perceived linkage” to deportations.

The agents suggest splitting Ice into two separate agencies.

Ice did not respond to a request for comment on the letter, which was first reported by the Texas Observer.

The letter is likely to bolster the growing movement in Democratic politics and activist circles to abolish Ice. In recent days a number of high-profile Democrats, including the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, and New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, have called for the agency to be disbanded with a new immigration enforcement program brought in in its place.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old who stunned the country when she unseated the Democratic heavyweight Joe Crowley in a primary for New York’s 14th congressional district earlier this week, has also campaigned on abolishing Ice.

The calls are unlikely to sway Donald Trump who, since assuming office, has taken extraordinary measures to bolster the agency’s powers. In January 2017, the president signed an executive order to increase the agency’s staffing by a further 10,000 employees. The order also vastly expanded Ice’s immigration enforcement powers, enabling agents to target essentially any undocumented migrant in the country.

Annual immigration arrests have soared since January 2017, from 110,568 in 2016 to 143,470 last year, although they still remain below the height of annual arrests under Barack Obama’s administration.