The Trump administration has begun to pull Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents from Washington, D.C. protests over the police killing of George Floyd, NBC News reports. “At its height, nearly 400 border agents and officers from the Washington region were deployed to respond to protesters.”
However, communities will still be at risk in other areas of the country due to their presence, because the report said that the administration will still keep a number of Border Patrol agents at protests in Arizona and California. As advocacy group Southern Border Communities Coalition recently said, “The presence of border patrol agents places everybody’s safety at risk.”
Advocates and leaders including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have slammed the deployment of agents to protests, who said “Last year CBP officers circulated mockup images of my violent rape ahead of my visit to their facilities. They hung framed photos of officers aiming guns at people on the walls […] CBP is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, & it very well may be one of the most dangerous.” It didn’t take long for the agencies to show why their presence at protests is a menace to the public.
Last week, advocacy group Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) tweeted a video of ICE special agents tackling a Latino man at a protest in New York City, claiming he “had a weapon and could be a threat to public safety.” IDP said that during the ordeal, agents had guns pointed at the man as they searched “for something to justify their attack on him,” the group told told NBC News. He had no weapons. He was eventually released, but required a visit to the hospital for a head injury sustained during the ordeal.
Meanwhile, the continued presence of border agents at protests in California and Arizona only adds to the existing fears immigrants already face in highly militarized regions.
“CBP officials ... regularly act like the Constitution does not apply in border areas, operating lawlessly and frequently disregarding the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures in its ‘100-mile border zone,’” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in 2018. “The agency’s wrongheaded practice of racial profiling means that people of color face a disproportionate level of constitutional violations along the Southwest border.”
IDP attorney Terry Lawson raised this concern following the U.S. military veteran’s harassment by special agents with ICE in New York City, telling NBC News, "It's just really concerning to see ICE out on the street, grabbing somebody who's peacefully protesting before the curfew, who was doing absolutely nothing wrong. The use of force also seems very troubling and the fact that he's a man of Puerto Rican descent is really concerning because it raises questions about racial profiling."
“ICE and CBP are rogue agencies with sordid histories of abuse, violence, and human rights violations,” the ACLU said in slamming their presence at rallies. “Deploying these agents and resources into cities already suffering from over-militarization and law enforcement brutality is a mistake that imperils the lives of even more Black and Brown people.”