Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaders across the country are being replaced, many with senior Customs and Border Protection agents.
Frustrated with the current level of immigration arrests and deportations, the Trump administration is reassigning top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and replacing them with United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, Fox News‘ Bill Melugin reported on Monday. The change comes at a time when CBP and its leadership have been accused of aggressive and unconstitutional enforcement tactics in major Democratic cities.
Sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that ICE leaders in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego have already been reassigned to other posts, at least some of whom will be replaced by senior CBP agents. These cities represent the first five of a total of 12 field offices planned for a leadership overhaul. The agency has a total of 25 field offices nationwide. An additional four cities will also undergo leadership changes due to retirements and other circumstances, a source told the Associated Press.
Replacing ICE leadership with CBP officials would be an unprecedented move with significant consequences for the future of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. Since Trump took office, ICE has led the way in making immigration arrests and detaining an unprecedentedly high number of immigrants in legally dubious ways. And while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has asserted that it is only targeting „the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens“, this claim has been debunked since June, when the Cato Institute revealed that 65 percent of individuals taken by ICE had no criminal convictions and 93 percent had no violent convictions.
