So, almost four years since the inauguration, the Trump Administration has finally begun to force ICE SVU to start doing immigration law enforcement.  As I pointed out, the deployment of Border Patrol Agents (BPA) to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Enforcement and Removal Operations (ICE ERO) was strange, as ICE SVU agents could have been assigned to assist ICE ERO Deportation Officers (DO) much more conveniently, and at no cost to the government, as BPAs have to be deployed on temporary detail outside of the Southwest border States at a significant travel and per diem costs. 

Just to clarify, ICE SVU, which I call ICE Special Victims Unit, is the supposed investigative arm of ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), but is really just a disgruntled group of legacy U.S. Customs Service (USCS) holdovers and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Special Agents (SA) from the slapdash creation of ICE in 2003.

Now, a few years ago, then Acting Director of ICE, Thomas Homan, promised increased enforcement in Sanctuary Cities that never happened.  As a consequence of his failure to bring the hammer down on Sanctuary Cities, especially failing to arrest and prosecute Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, the Sanctuary City problem only go worse.  I hope this is different.  Based Bob Barr is doing his part, but will Ken The Knife force pretty boy Chad Wolf to do his job?

Intensifying its enforcement in so-called sanctuary cities across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun 24-hour-a-day surveillance operations around the homes and workplaces of undocumented immigrants. The agency plans to deploy hundreds of additional officers in unmarked cars in the coming weeks to increase arrests in cities where local law enforcement agencies do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

ICE leadership has requested at least 500 special agents who normally conduct long-term investigations into dangerous criminals and traffickers to join the enhanced arrest campaign rolling out in sanctuary cities, according to an internal email reviewed by The New York Times.

[‘Flood the Streets’: ICE Targets Sanctuary Cities With Increased Surveillance, by Caitlin Dickerson, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Annie Correal, NYT, March 5, 2020]

The good news is that many of the arrests out of Operation Palladium have been collateral arrests of other illegal aliens not targeted specifically in this operation.

The official said that while some of those targets have been apprehended in the effort, the majority of the arrests have been “collateral” — undocumented individuals who were not targeted, but who happened to be present during an attempted apprehension.

However, a Deep State saboteur at ICE SVU, Henry Lucero, did give illegal aliens an out, apparently ICE SVU has the discretion to ignore some illegal aliens.

Mr. Lucero said that no one living in the United States illegally was safe from deportation, but that officers could exercise discretion in choosing whether to make such collateral arrests.

This is just typical of the saboteurs at ICE SVU—though technically Lucero is with ERO, but he still isn’t with the program.  He wants to let some illegal aliens free.  Why?

Deep State Saboteur Henry Lucero

Memo to Henry Lucero: you aren’t going to get any brownie points for telling the public that ICE can decline to arrest some illegal aliens.  Just stick with the part that all illegal aliens are subject to arrest.  That is how you scare illegal aliens out of the United States.