Washington Wednesday: Immigration enforcement

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 25th of June.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Today, a look at the authority Immigration and Customs Enforcement possesses to detain and deport illegal aliens.

EICHER: But first, members of Congress weigh in on Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, but more specifically the U-S attack over the weekend on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Lawmakers were supposed to receive a classified briefing on Tuesday on the operation. That meeting has been postponed.

So for now, members of Congress have unanswered questions about just how effective the strikes were and where that leaves the U.S.’s role in the region.

House Speaker Mike Johnson.

JOHNSON: Peace in the Middle East has never been closer within our grasp.

MAST: Texas Democrat Al Green sees it differently. He’s the member of Congress who filed three separate, unsuccessful articles of impeachment in the first Trump term, one, so far, in the second term, but it does look like he’s on the brink of filing another.

GREEN: I believe that the President of the United States has committed an impeachable act.

EICHER: Other Democrats are waiting for more information before drawing conclusions.

Here’s Congressman George Latimer of New York, a Democrat. Last year, he ousted a vocally anti-Israel incumbent.

LATIMER: Do we have an accurate report about how much damage the bombs did? It was asserted when they were dropped that night that we had obliterated their program. They won’t be able to do this. Well, we don’t know that yet.

MAST: Others believe Iran’s relatively weak response and its quick embrace of a cease-fire speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the strikes. Here’s Republican Congressman Mike Lawler of New York. He’s chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East.

LAWLER: You see how Iran has responded with a symbolic strike. And you see how quickly they are seeking a ceasefire. That wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t take action.

EICHER: Congressional leadership expects to be briefed more on the Iran strikes later this week.

Turning now to immigration enforcement, here’s Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno.

​​LEO BRICENO: A few weeks ago, Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives held a news conference to express alarm over the same issue sparking unrest and leaving cars ablaze in downtown Los Angeles: ICE’s detention and apprehension practices.

CARTER: We met with Wendy Brito, a New Orleans area mother of three from my district…

That’s Louisiana Congressman Troy Carter.

CARTER: She is married to an American citizen. All of her children were born in the state of Louisianna… She was going in for her regular checkup when she was detained, she was not told why she was being detained. She was not afforded the ability to have counsel; she was not given due process. How could this possibly be right in America?

Brito’s story is one data point. Democrats also pointed to ICE apprehending children, using zip ties to restrain people, and holding detainees for months without explanation, and say the agency is out of control.

WORLD wasn’t able to independently verify those accounts. But in speaking with lawmakers and experts, what is clear is that the agency has a unique structure and that it sometimes appears to play by a different set of rules. In part, that’s because the agency’s mandate is different from that of other law enforcement, and because it has more discretion in how to carry out operations. With ICE amping up its enforcement under President Trump, lawmakers are divided on what’s appropriate for the nation’s chief immigration enforcement agency.

KNOTT: I do not submit to the premise that we owe due process to the people that are here illegally.

Congressman Brad Knott is a Republican out of North Carolina. Before his election to Congress in 2024, Knott worked as an attorney, helping prosecute organized crime, drug cartels, and human trafficking.

He says ICE isn’t interested in securing criminal convictions. Instead, it makes arrests with the end goal of deportations.

KNOTT: It is a civil matter. The deportation is a civil enforcement mechanism. Due process attaches to criminal measures. The only thing we owe an illegal immigrant is a humane trip home.

That means some of the processes and protections built into the criminal justice system don’t apply. That concerns some experts in immigration law.

KOH: The law has characterized deportation as civil and not criminal for a really long time.

Jennifer Koh is a professor of law at Pepperdine University. She studies the intersection between illegal immigration and criminal law, and says this approach to immigration enforcement means noncitizens do not enjoy the same due process rights as they would in a criminal process.

KOH: Like, for example, if you’re accused of a crime, you know you’re appointed like a government-appointed lawyer in your defense, you have certain rights, a right to a jury trial, a right against double jeopardy that are all associated with the criminal process. Many of those rights do not apply in deportation because it’s a civil process.

That means ICE has flexibility to do things in the field that other agencies can’t. ICE isn’t concerned that evidence might get thrown out because of the way it is collected or that a conviction won’t happen because of an improper arrest. The Supreme Court affirmed this in the 1984 case: INS v. Lopez-Mendoza. Quoting the majority opinion:

“The mere fact of an illegal arrest has no bearing on a subsequent deportation hearing. The deportation hearing looks prospectively to the respondent’s right to remain in this country in the future.”

Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana says that’s why ICE agents can go in looking for one person and come out with others in tow.

HIGGINs: They may come into contact with seven or eight other guys that have had formal orders of removal. …Their warrant and information might not have been exactly for that person but that person was part of the, came into contact with ICE during that operation. So, they arrest them too.

Many Democrats believe there should be more of a process and more protections. Here’s New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat, Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

ESPAILLAT: Anybody that steps foot on soil in the United States is already protected and guarded by the U.S. constitution and there should be due process extended to that person.

The courts have a variety of cases before them that have the potential to clarify to what extent ICE needs to respect due process.

In the meantime, another area of confusion centers on how ICE operates region to region.

Some ICE agents operate in street clothes. Others mimic law enforcement or wear uniforms looking like SWAT teams. Occasionally, they apprehend persons of interest in batches. Some wear masks, others don’t.

Professor Koh explains.

KOH: A lot is left up to the sort of agency leadership either at the national level or at the local level to kind of determine how to prioritize their resources.

The agency does have a Fugitive Operations Handbook that details its general practices. But in many cases, those guidelines provide only basic direction. The 2010 version, obtained through court documents, is 37 pages long.

The section on arrests is less than half a page.

I asked lawmakers if it’s time to reform ICE—making its operations more uniform across the board. And I got very different answers.

GARCIA: We’ve discussed this many times. There should be a standard.

That’s Congressman Robert Garcia of California. He’s a Democrat who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee.

GARCIA: ICE hasn’t been around for decades and decades. It’s been around for what, 20 years? 25 years? And so I think that as an agency there has to be reform, there has to be a focus on treating people humanely.

By contrast, Congressman Knott, the former attorney, believes that ICE’s current flexibility is necessary for enforcing the law in a variety of situations.

KNOTT: There are a dime-a-dozen circumstances for how people are apprehended. Sometimes they’re taken into custody off the street, sometimes they’re taken out of a mob, sometimes they’re taken out of a crime scene, sometimes they’re taken out of court.

Knott says setting a national standard for enforcement processes is unnecessary as long as ICE affords illegal immigrants a humane deportation process. What lawmakers and analysts will continue to watch for is how ICE agents use their discretionary authority to meet the administration’s goals.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in Washington.

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