‘those Rules Are Gone’: How Ice Is Rethinking Its Raids 

As President Donald Trump has ramped up immigration enforcement, the scenes playing out across the country have been stunning to many. And that includes top veterans of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“All of this is unprecedented,” John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, tells POLITICO Magazine. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen a nationwide immigration enforcement effort like this.”

Sandweg argued that most ICE agents treat people with dignity, but he noted the Trump administration has revved up the agency’s raid strategy, leading to broad and indiscriminate sweeps to maximize arrests — regardless of people’s criminal record.

In the past few weeks, ICE’s efforts have intensified even more, with growing public outcry.

In suburban Chicago last month, a masked ICE agent shot a pepper ball into the head of a Presbyterian pastor as he prayed outside an ICE facility. Another ICE agent fatally shot a Mexican immigrant in Illinois. Also last month, in New York City, an ICE officer was removed from duty after he was captured on video forcibly shoving a woman to the ground outside an immigration court. Meanwhile, earlier this month, ICE agents conducted a military-style raid on a South Side Chicago apartment building, detaining hundreds of residents, many of whom are U.S.-born children.

On Thursday, after Chicago journalists and protestors sued the federal government alleging “extreme brutality” from agents on the ground, a federal judge in Illinois blocked federal agents from using force or threatening to arrest journalists.

Sandweg worked at the Department of Homeland Security for five years, spending four years as legal counsel. He capped off his DHS tenure with a one-year term leading the nation’s immigration enforcement agency from 2013-2014.

Immigration has always been one of the most polarizing and political fields of law enforcement, Sandweg concedes. But, he adds, it’s become even more polarizing now.

In a wide-ranging interview, Sandweg also expressed concern that ICE wouldn’t be able to adequately train the rapidly expanding ICE workforce and got candid about one of the most divisive trends at the agency: “I hate that the agents are wearing the masks,” he said.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

We're seeing ICE agents display really heavy-handed use of force, smashing in car windows, shoving people to the ground, smoke bombing people, pepper spraying. Has ICE ever been this aggressive before?

Obviously, I don't think we've ever seen a nationwide immigration enforcement effort like this. During the Obama administration, we did a large number of nationwide operations, but they're very targeted. They're the kind of work where you're going after specific individuals, people that you knew had a criminal history. They were carefully selected. There was a lot of research and investigation done before you went out to make the actual arrest. These are much more akin to area sweeps, where they're going out and just stopping people in the streets, or working in conjunction with other law enforcement as they execute traffic stops, or hitting a large number of apartments in a building where you suspect people are undocumented. We've never seen anything like this. I mean, the deployment of FBI agents and other law enforcement agents to supplement DHS efforts, the pulling of these border patrol agents into these urban cities. All of this is unprecedented. 

In my experience, most ICE agents do their jobs. They do, and they treat people with dignity and respect. I know we've seen some incidents where that hasn't been true. And I think that's attributable to a lot of things. I think it's because the agents are under tremendous pressure. They've been under a lot of pressure to ratchet up the number of arrests. They've been forced to adopt some of these more aggressive tactics, because the [Trump] administration seems more interested in the quantity of people arrested, more so than the quality. It's not like we're seeing those more surgical operations, where you might arrest fewer people, but they have a more serious criminal history. You're seeing just large numbers of arrested people who have been here a long time, people who have U.S. citizen family members.

And then some of the incidents, I think, have been unfortunate reactions to the protests. This nationwide sweep of people who are not just criminal aliens, it's triggered a lot of civil unrest, public protests, and I think, unfortunately, you've seen some aggressive tactics in dealing with it. 

It's not always clear to me whether it's ICE, border patrol or even what's called Federal Protective Service, the law enforcement DHS agency that protects federal buildings. If it’s immigration related, it just gets the ICE moniker.

This kind of enforcement is much more widespread, too, than what we've seen before. Tell me a little bit about the Trump administration's emphasis on quantity over quality of arrests. That seems like a very marked shift from how previous administrations have handled and deployed immigration enforcement.

Even compared to the first Trump administration, you didn't see anything like this. What we have seen is that immigration enforcement has become probably the central priority for all U.S. law enforcement, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense. This executive order has elevated this to the highest priority. I've never seen a whole government effort focused like this, even in the State Department. As a result of that, we've never seen an immigration enforcement effort like this. And that manifests itself in a lot of different ways, really quickly. 

When you're at ICE, of course you can run down to a Home Depot parking lot. Any administration could have done this: round the Home Depot parking lot, stop a bunch of day laborers and ID them. In car washes, in places where low-wage workers work, places like that. The reason that historically hasn't been done, is you just don't find criminals there. Once in a blue moon you find someone, and we see that the administration highlights when they get someone who has some criminal history. But by and large, your really serious criminal threats don't do shifts at the local car wash for minimum wage. They're out making their money, making a living as a criminal. 

And so ICE has always focused our operations on getting those individuals — that takes more time, though. You're taking lists of people who are criminally convicted and you're identifying them, and then once you identify them, you're doing research on addresses, and then you're building a dossier and sending a team out to get them. The Obama administration deported a large number of people, but generally, a very high percentage of them were people who either just crossed the border or people with a serious criminal history. 

This administration, though, is taking a different tack. This administration has repurposed the way they've operationalized ICE — to go out and get as many people as possible, and that's why we're seeing these raids on the car washes and on the Home Depot parking lots. They know they can make a large number of arrests there, and they don't seem to care whether or not those people pose a threat to public safety. They just say, “If you're undocumented, you're a fair target.”

It seems like this agency is much more politicized now than it's ever been.

Immigration has always been the most politicized law enforcement work. Certainly during my time at DHS, the goal was always to just do our job, and the politics will take care of itself. Focus on the worst of the worst. Get the bad guys off the streets. Everything else will work out. It certainly seems to me that this administration has steered into the political debate. That's unfortunate, because ICE has become this political football that makes it really hard for the agency to do its job. And it'll make it really hard in years to come for the agency to do its job.

ICE is expanding, and has poured money into recruiting efforts. It's looking to double its ranks, and it's also expanding its units. So what guardrails can ICE place to properly train all of these new employees?

That's a real concern. It begins with the recruitment. The first concern would be, let's hope ICE doesn't lower their standards. This administration is going to want to get as many of these new agents out in the field as quickly as possible. Normally, to hire this many people, it would take the agency three, four years.

The problem is that the agency only has the capacity to do so many background checks at once, to interview so many people at once. The training academy can only train so many people at once. It would take years to fully deploy these agents. This administration clearly doesn't want to wait. They want to get people out there as quickly as possible. Now, some of what they're doing makes some sense: They’re recruiting heavily from local law enforcement, other law enforcement agencies, offering signing bonuses and things. But the concern here would be, to the extent to which the administration wants to get these people deployed quickly, do they cut corners? I worry that if you start cutting corners on standards or background checks or training, that it's only a recipe for problems down the line.

Official DHS policy requires ICE agents to use only the level of force that is “objectively reasonable,” and that's not concretely defined. What is reasonable? From your experience, I'd love to hear how agents are trained to apply force and what they're trained to recognize.

Just to keep it simple, the use of force needs to be commensurate with the threat that's presented your way. It does seem to me that a lot of the episodes where [use of force] certainly seemed to push the line involved other agencies. A lot of them were Border Patrol related.

The hard part, and the reason why I'm always hesitant to question use of force, is that I just don't know what the agents knew. This apartment building in Chicago, I don't know what information they had before they went into the apartment building. Operations where it looks heavy-handed, but maybe they have good intel that says a violent, dangerous gang member is in the house. In a case like that, a ton of force is appropriate, if not necessary. But if it's just a routine immigration operation, wearing the tactical gear and aggressively shoving people against walls and using long arms and some of these things certainly strikes me as excessive. But it's hard to judge.

Speaking of Chicago, a Mexican immigrant was fatally shot by an ICE agent there in late September. And then last month in Dallas, we saw a shooter open fire at an ICE facility. This seems like such an uptick in violence, both coming from and directed at ICE. Have you seen this level of violence before? Or is this a new kind of escalation?

No, I've never seen it. The number one rule: You have to keep the agents safe. One thing that is tough for someone like me, having worked with people at ICE, is that they bear the brunt of people's frustration with the administration's policies. The agents have a duty to execute the president's policies.

Unfortunately, there have been some psychopaths out there — the shooting in Dallas, absolutely horrific. The number of assaults, the uptick is real. There have been increased numbers of assaults, and as the officers do some of these operations, there’s rock throwing, the shooting in Dallas, all of that is real. It’s just a very unfortunate time we're in. While I fully respect everyone's right to protest these actions, you also have to make sure the agents themselves are safe.

I understand why it's happening, but it's not the agents who are crafting these policies. In my experience, most of these agents signed up with the agency because they want to make a difference in terms of making the country safer. But unfortunately, they do bear the brunt of this. But no, I've not seen this level of assaults on the agents themselves.

Why is this happening? Is it just because ICE is extending its reach?

Because it's become such a symbol of the administration. I think that if people were asked to define what the Trump administration stands for, immigration enforcement would be top one or two. ICE has become the symbol of the administration, and that's what makes it an attractive target for people.

And what about these headlines about violence and the use of force coming from ICE agents as well?

I think the whole thing has become so politically charged. It increases agitation, it makes it more likely that somebody crazy is going to try to assault an officer. I think as a result of that, the agents probably are more defensive than they otherwise would be. And more aggressive in terms of taking steps to protect their safety. It's a difficult situation, and I don't envy the officers at all. They're in a very tough position.

And on this topic of officer safety, civil rights groups have raised alarms about agent masking. ICE’s current acting director, Todd Lyons, has justified agents concealing their identities, masking their faces — pointing out what you just mentioned, this increased risk of doxxing, threats, abuse and violence against officers.

It was never an issue. I spent five years at DHS working on ICE issues. It just wasn't an issue. None of the officers felt the need to wear masks. I think it's an unfortunate byproduct of the administration's policies. This is a very contentious area of law, this idea that we're not going to discern the difference between migrants who might be committing serious crimes and those who might have real long-term presence in the United States, young children and family members and things of that nature.

I hate that the agents are wearing the masks. I think it is hurting the reputation of the agency, and feeding a lot of these narratives about the agency. But I'm also sympathetic to the agents themselves, who need to protect themselves and their families. Like we just talked about, there are these upticks, these massive upticks in assaults on the agents. These threats against the agents are real, and there's, unfortunately, a lot of people out there who can't discern the difference between the administration and the policymakers and the agents themselves. And as a result of that, these agents feel compelled to take steps to protect themselves and their family, and I'm sympathetic to it. 

Just to clarify, the decision to wear a mask, is that an individual choice? Is that coming from the agent, or is that an organization-wide policy?

My recollection, there was no policy on it. I don't think this administration is requiring them to wear masks. There's just no policy in place that restricts use of masks.

We've talked about how ICE has changed so much under the current administration, but looking back from when you were with DHS and looking at reports of activity now, and what we're seeing on the ground, how has ICE’s work changed in the past decade?

Two big things have changed that are really significant. The first is the border. ICE has a responsibility to take people into custody who are not from Mexico, if they're apprehended at the border. All these asylum seekers, ICE has the responsibility of detaining them, processing them through immigration court and supervising them if they were released. Since right about the time I left DHS in 2014, that's when the border numbers really started picking up. And that has really overwhelmed ICE for 10 years. Detention beds were full of people from the border. It limited ICE's ability to do much else on the interior of the United States. 

Beginning with Biden in June of last year, the numbers at the border started declining dramatically. Those declining numbers frees up ICE, it starts to have more additional resources to rededicate to interior enforcement. And then the Trump administration comes in.

Are we seeing a brand-new shift in ICE’s mission and directive?

I wouldn’t say it’s a shift, this has always been a key part of ICE’s mission. What's different is who they’re targeting. Under Obama, under Biden and even to a certain extent, under the first Trump administration, there were priorities. The agents were told, “Focus first on the worst. Worst first. Get the worst bad guys off the street first, we'll deal with everything else later.” Those rules are gone.

Where do we go from here? How do we de-escalate?

Look, the country needs to pass immigration reform. We revert back to ICE’s more traditional tactics of focusing on “the absolute worst first.” This is a difficult question that the country has struggled with. We have people in this country for 15, 20 years who have been out of status, and in that time they've had children, they've married U.S. citizens, they've integrated themselves, they've gone to church, made friends with people at work. They’ve just integrated themselves in society. 

Anytime you say, “We're going to rip those people out of there,” it's going to be contentious. Unfortunately, I just don't see a scenario where these continued, very aggressive, mass deportation efforts don’t remain incredibly contentious.