r/ImmigrationPathways

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is expanding agreements with state police in Indiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming that authorize troopers to participate in federal immigration kidnapping operations during traffic stops, accidents and commercial vehicle inspections, according to an August 14 report by FreightWaves.

The agreements were established under the Task Force Model of ICE’s 287(g) program. Once trained and credentialed by ICE, state troopers can question people about their immigration status, detain those suspected of civil immigration violations and transfer them into federal custody.

The program transforms every encounter with state and local police into a potential kidnapping. A worker with car trouble or a truck driver undergoing a commercial vehicle inspection can be questioned, detained and delivered into ICE’s network of concentration camps even though they committed no crime.

Seventeen Wyoming Highway Patrol officers have already received immigration-enforcement credentials. Highway Patrol spokesman Aaron Brown acknowledged that when immigration status arises during a stop, a person determined to be in the country without authorization can be detained and transferred to ICE.

Brown nevertheless claimed that Wyoming troopers “do not act as ICE agents.” The distinction is fraudulent. Under the agreement, state police exercise authority delegated by ICE to identify, detain and arrest immigrants while performing their regular duties.

Section 287(g) takes its name from a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act added by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton. It authorizes the federal government to delegate immigration-enforcement powers to state and local law enforcement agencies.

ICE currently operates three forms of 287(g) agreement. The Jail Enforcement Model permits local jail personnel to question prisoners about immigration status and hold them for transfer to ICE. The Warrant Service Officer Model authorizes corrections officers to serve administrative immigration warrants. The Task Force Model, the most far-reaching, allows police, sheriffs and state agents to carry out federal immigration raids during their normal oppressive operations.

"Well, in this community that we’re standing in, we would miss these Haitian workers a lot. They work hard. Many of them are in the healthcare industry. All the fields where poor people would benefit, many of them they work there...Who’s going to replace them?

"I don’t have a lot of Haitian students where I work. But we’re still going to feel the effects. They’re in every aspect of our community life in this neighborhood.

"The US is supposed to be the most democratic country in the world, but come on now, it’s not. It has not been for a while. It’s not democratic. Hey, don’t you see autocrats coming in? And nothing is wrong in their eyes…

"They claim that TPS was a temporary status and it’s run its course. That is what we’re hearing from the government. …But what are these people going back to? Most of them have zero to go back to... If you have a heart, you have to feel badly for them.

If they can get rid of 350,000 Haitians…you’re going to trample on everybody sooner or later."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducted a sweeping domestic spying operation against unions, left-wing organizations and opponents of the Trump administration during the federal occupation of Minneapolis and St. Paul, according to government documents reviewed by the New York Times and made public Thursday in a federal court filing.

Undercover agents infiltrated meetings in churches, libraries, parks, schools, restaurants and union halls. They secretly recorded political discussions, entered encrypted Signal chats, collected license plate numbers, and compiled dossiers containing names, photographs, home addresses, employment and family information. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of DHS, also used administrative summonses to obtain years of financial records belonging to national unions and nonprofit organizations without identifying any underlying criminal conduct.

The dragnet was directed not at the agents who murdered Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, but at those who protested their killings, the federal occupation of Minnesota and Trump’s mass deportation operation.