LOS ANGELES — Federal immigration officials confirmed Friday that border agents and officers, including those in tactical units, will be deployed in so-called sanctuary cities to assist in the arrests of immigrants in the country illegally.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed details of the planned deployment that were first reported in The New York Times. The agency referred further questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.
CBP will deploy 50 Border Patrol agents and 50 field operations customs officers in nine areas, according to the agency. Specially trained officers will be sent to cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, the Times reported.
Additional agents are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J., according to the agency. The deployment of the teams will run from February through May.
“ICE is utilizing CBP to supplement enforcement activity in response to the resource challenges stemming from sanctuary city policies,” ICE Director Matthew Albence said in a statement.
Mr. Albence said in the statement that the action was being taken in response to sanctuary-city law enforcement agencies not cooperating with federal authorities by turning over immigrants being held in local jails. As a result, the statement continued, federal officers “are forced to make at-large arrests of criminal aliens who have been released into communities.”
“This effort requires a significant amount of additional time and resources,” Mr. Albence said. “When sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, it increases the occurrence of preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims.”
The number of non-detained cases increased from 2.6 million in fiscal year 2018 to more than 3.2 million in the following fiscal year, according to DHS.
“ICE does not have sufficient resources to effectively manage the sustained increase in non-detained cases which is exacerbated by the rise of sanctuary jurisdictions,” the agency said in a statement.
John Sandweg, who headed ICE during the administration of President Barack Obama, called the latest move by the Trump administration “dangerous.”
“You’re pulling critical manpower off the border, and you’re doing it really candidly for a political show of force,” he said.
Mr. Sandweg called it a move “to offend so-called sanctuary cities … by deploying a bunch of Army-looking Border Patrol agents.”
First Published: February 15, 2020, 5:22 a.m.
