The rise of Border Patrol in US cities

0:01The Trump administration is sending border patrol agents right into the heart of some of America's biggest cities. Instead of policing America's rugged frontiers, these border agents are being deployed to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, and as of this morning, New Orleans. They're joining other immigration agents from the Department of Homeland Security in these urban operations. We're seeing a really aggressive approach to immigration enforcement in these blue cities. We're seeing the rise of Border Patrol agents taking on a more prominent role in conducting these mass arrests.

0:47Marianne Levine covers immigration for the Post, and she says a clear pattern has emerged. We're really seeing the lengths to which the administration is willing to go when it comes to reaching President Trump's deportation goals. The Trump administration claims to be going after, quote, violent offenders. And in each city, they're touting big arrest numbers. But verifying all this and who is even being deported is more complicated. So Marianne and our colleagues on the immigration team decided to go deep in one city, Chicago. One of the challenges in writing about DHS's efforts, especially in a big city like Chicago, is often we're really reliant on bystanders to record what's happening because Chicago is obviously a sprawling city.

1:39And oftentimes these arrests take place in a matter of minutes. Mary Ann has been going through court documents and talking with agency officials, families, lawyers, residents, to really understand how this aggressive immigration enforcement is playing out on the ground. Chicago made it clear there's a new leader out front. Will you state your name, sir, please? My name is Gregory Bovino. And your title? Chief Patrol Agent.

2:13Gregory Bovino, the man who's been commanding many of these operations. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Elahe Izadi. It's Wednesday, December 3rd. Today, I talk with Marianne about what her reporting in Chicago reveals about a new era of immigration enforcement. And why we should all be paying attention to Bovino.

2:47Marianne, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. So let's just start with the big picture here. Why has the federal government increased immigration operations in these cities? So I think that we have to look at this in the context of President Trump's campaign promise to conduct mass deportations. To do that, you have to increase arrest numbers. And so we've previously reported that the administration wants to conduct one million deportations by the end of President Trump's first year. Now, they're likely not going to hit that number, but this is a very numbers-driven administration.

3:23And so the way the administration is thinking about this is they want to go into what's known as sanctuary cities to try to increase arrest numbers and to try to increase the number of people that they can potentially deport. And what is a sanctuary city? A sanctuary city is basically a city where the cooperation from local authorities is limited with federal immigration enforcement. And the Trump administration has made a lot of allegations about these cities, saying that they're harboring criminals. This is part of a message that we saw in his campaign as well. But basically, they have really targeted these blue cities in part because of their opposition to sanctuary cities.

4:01But also, there's definitely a very clear political message here, too, in wanting to label these cities as democratic cities that are harboring individuals committing crimes. And that's basically the administration's argument. Yeah, I want to now turn to Chicago in particular, because as I understand it, you and your colleagues, Arlise Hernandez and Maria Sacchetti, you focused on this deployment of immigration agents in Chicago. and you put together a very detailed account of what's been happening there. Why did you want to focus on Chicago? Well, Chicago has been a really high profile operation.

4:38Chicago also saw a lot of these high profile cases. Breaking news. A man is dead and an ICE agent seriously hurt after an immigration arrest ended in gunfire in Franklin Park. You're looking at video of pre-K teacher Diana Galeano in the back of an unmarked car. federal agents used to detain her, arrested while children were getting dropped off here. A federal agent is seen firing pepper balls at protesters outside an ICE processing center, and one of those pepper balls struck a Chicago pastor right in his head. And we thought that it was a really important example of all the ways in which the administration is trying to conduct its immigration enforcement operations and also the rising power of Border Patrol in conducting these efforts.

5:26Is it unusual for Border Patrol, which the name implies they are people who are focused on the border, would be in a city like Chicago that's in the interior of the country? It is very unusual. In talking to former DHS officials and immigration experts, they said that they have not historically seen Border Patrol play this big role in interior arrests. It's a role that ICE has typically played. But we're now seeing that just given the demands that the administration has placed on ICE, that Border Patrol is among the different law enforcement entities that are assisting in the rest effort. And I think there's some concern among former THS officials about Border Patrol's familiarity with aspects of interior enforcement.

6:15For example, how long someone's been in the country. And because when individuals are crossing the border, everyone basically is arrested because they're crossing illegally. I think there's some concern that that nuance might get lost when Border Patrol is conducting interior enforcement. Yeah, because some people might be in the process of a legal proceeding. And that is a very different situation than someone who has just come into the country and is not yet in the system at all. Correct. So now let's really dig into Chicago here and what immigration enforcement looks like. Let's first start with what the Department of Homeland Security has told you and has said about the scale of their operation in Chicago.

6:56Yeah. So the Department of Homeland Security has said that they've made about 4 ,000 arrests since they began this effort and that they have basically said that they've arrested people who are violent criminals. and they have said that they were going to go after the worst of the worst and they claim that they have. And so those are the claims that DHS has made. We have found that in talking to some of the folks we spoke to for this story that many people do not have these criminal records. Can you tell me about one of these cases? Yeah, one that stands out to me is the arrest of a man named Juan Manuel Armenta Rodriguez.

7:32He's 45, he has a partner, and they have a teenage son in Chicago. My colleague Arliz Hernandez talked to him by phone about everything.

7:46She asked, when was it that you came to the U.S.? He says, I arrived when I was 17 years old.

7:56So Juan was most recently working as a cook, and he said that the arrest happened when he was waiting at a bus stop en route to pick up his paycheck. He said that several armed men approached him and surrounded him.

8:16He told Arlis, the police asked me, do you have papers? How long have you been here? And he said, I didn't say anything. And then they asked me my name and I told them my name was Juan Manuel Armenta Rodriguez.

8:33Juan Manuel Armenta Rodriguez. But Juan says they kept insisting he was a different person with a different last name, a guy named Juan Manuel Armenta Martinez. His impression was that the immigration agents were either looking for someone else or they thought they had arrested someone else with a very serious criminal record. So he said he then went to sign some papers that he thought were release documents.

9:01But he later learned that he had signed a voluntary departure form. And what that means is he was agreeing to leave the United States and not to fight his deportation. So as a result of all this, he is very rapidly deported to Mexico. Two days later, he shows up in a DHS press release. The press release was titled Pedophiles, Abusers, Rapists, and Other Violent Thugs. It also had a photo of his mud shot and described him as a criminal illegal alien with arrests for armed robbery and drunken driving.

9:32Okay, so just to summarize, Juan basically gets picked up off the street in Chicago. He is undocumented, but he's been in the U.S. for a long time. He gets quickly deported, and the whole time he's saying, wait, you've got the wrong Juan. Meanwhile, the federal government is saying, look, we've got these really dangerous people out of the country to include this Juan. They put out this press release, say all these people have done all these things. Marianne, do we know anything about Juan's background or does he have a criminal record? So Juan Manuel Armento was never actually convicted of the crimes on the press release.

10:10He'd been arrested, but the press release did not mention, for example, that his DUI allegation was reduced to reckless driving and that police declined to charge him with the 2006 armed robbery charges. And I think this example is important because it shows how DHS can at times leave out really key information about individuals who they say are criminals. And a big part of this administration's message is that they are arresting criminals. But when you have dropped charges, that means there's no proof of criminality. And for the people who are affected, like Juan, it means there's also no due process or a way for them to challenge the allegations that DHS is making.

10:48So if they've been in the United States a long time or have U.S. citizen family members who could be harmed by his deportation, the avenues of challenging that can be really difficult. What has the impact been on his family? I mean, I think it's been really hard. What they're asking is where was his due process? And I think that it's a question that a lot of immigrant families have had in looking at how this administration has really tried to rapidly deport people. And what has DHS said about this deportation? So when we asked DHS for comment, they basically reiterated that he had been arrested for armed robbery and that he was driving under the influence.

11:26And so they essentially restated the allegations with no acknowledgement that those charges had been dropped or reduced. And they also told us that he had accepted a voluntary departure to return home to Mexico. Marianne, what do we know about just overall the percentage of the people getting arrested and deported that have serious criminal backgrounds? DHS has offered us limited information about who they're arresting. They have a very select group of people that they like to highlight, but it really represents only a very small fraction of the arrests. And what we do know is from court cases and from analyses that we've done at the Post of public data just generally about the records that these individuals have.

12:15And one court case in Chicago, DHS had to turn over a list of more than 600 people who were arrested between mid-June and early October. And on that list, fewer than 70 have been described by ICE as high public safety risks. So despite the claims that DHS is making that the vast majority of these individuals are criminals or that they're going after the worst, the worst, we found in our reporting that many do not have criminal convictions and that there is this tendency to view anyone who is here legally as a criminal. Yeah, and Juan's story is just one story that paints that picture. I want to ask you about this other moment in Chicago that I'm here in D.C.

12:59and it caught my attention. And I'm curious how it fits into the reporting that you and your colleagues did. And that was this massive operation at an apartment building where people were dragged out of their apartments in the middle of the night. There were helicopters. It seemed quite dramatic even from here. And so what did that operation reveal to you? This operation showed the extent to which the administration has also taken a pretty performative approach to these immigration arrests. What happened was on the night of September 30th, all of a sudden, these residents who were living in an apartment complex in South Shore on the south side of Chicago were woken up at one in the morning.

13:42They said they heard drones, helicopters, and they were basically taken out of the apartment complex by federal immigration agents, federal law enforcement agents. So this was a highly publicized operation. Administration officials invited News Nation, which is a Trump-friendly news organization, to come along. And Bovino, who was leading the operation on the ground, spoke to them. The individuals that were going after trained to Aragua, one of the most violent gangs that the United States is plagued with right now. They traffic in arms. They traffic in humans. They have little regard for life.

14:20They tried to kind of portray this as this big law enforcement effort going into this building to go after people who are very dangerous. We know there's weapons. They've actually, there's been reports anyway of them taking over units in this apartment complex. But the stated reasons for going into this building have not necessarily been backed up by the events that have followed.

14:48Okay, so they said they were going after gang members, that the building had been taken over at times by this Venezuelan gang, Trende Aragua. Why do you say that hasn't necessarily been backed up? What did your reporting find? What DHS has said is that they claimed that Tranda Aragua was present in the building. But in talking about the arrests from this operation, they said they had publicly found just two alleged members of Tranda Aragua and that 35 other individuals who were swept up in this raid mainly had civil immigration violations, so had been in the country illegally. So the government itself has said they just confirmed two members of this gang arrested.

15:30Yeah, two alleged members of the gang. There's been no proof of it, but that's what they're claiming. Have they charged anyone with a crime? No, there have been no federal charges. So they basically have not named the individuals that were arrested. They've not named the alleged Trundale Aragua members. And there's just a lot of questions we have about an operation that led to U.S. citizens taken outside, people being taken and disturbed in the middle of the night and, you know, terrified by some of these efforts.

16:04After the break, more on the face of these expanding operations. Gregory Bovino. And what happened when a judge pressed him on how he handled protesters? We'll be right back.

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17:05So now I want to focus more on this one person, Gregory Bovino, who, as mentioned, is the public face of these operations and really this more aggressive, ride-ranging approach to immigration enforcement. Marion, can you tell me a little bit more about who he is and how did he come to lead the agency in this way? Yeah. So Gregory Pivino is someone who a lot of people were not tracking before the second Trump administration. He had been leading the El Centro sector of Border Patrol. He's been a longtime Border Patrol agent. And he was especially— On the southern border. On the southern border, correct.

17:44And he was in charge of this section, this very quiet 70-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in California. And days before the start of the second Trump administration, he did this really very high-profile raid in California where Border Patrol went to a very agricultural area far away from the border and detained people, many of whom were farm workers. Border Patrol has been spotted stopping, sighting, and fingerprinting people in Kern County this week. named Operation Return to Sender. CBP stationed over 60 agents in and around Kern County, arresting 78 people whom they said were illegally in the U.S.

18:22from Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador. That whole operation got a lot of attention, and it basically prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit alleging agents were indiscriminately arresting people who are not white, regardless of their immigration status. And so our understanding is that this high-profile operation is something that Trump administration officials liked and wanted to see more of. And I heard from one former DHS official that it helped get Bovino on the Trump administration's radar and really elevated his role in this administration in leading efforts like Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.

19:01And my understanding is you've asked him about his approach. What was his explanation of going into these cities now as leader of these operations beyond the border? He basically sees this as an effort to keep these cities safe. He has said that this operation has several messages that they want to send. One of the messages is that this administration enforces the law. Another message that he wanted to send is really to encourage people to self-deport. It doesn't have to be this way. people can sign up for the CBP home apps and that they can essentially self-deport. And I think he has a view that anyone who is here illegally or crossed the border illegally has committed a crime, which is a viewpoint that the administration just broadly has put out there, even as they say that they're trying to target the worst of the worst.

19:55When I asked him, you know, how many of these individuals have criminal records in Chicago who you've arrested, his response was, they're all criminals. And so he definitely represents a viewpoint that the administration has of going after undocumented immigrants in this very aggressive way. And he's really emblematic of that. I mean, as you've mentioned before, even at the top of this conversation, the administration has been invested in a more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement. Bovino, as you laid out here, is following along with that and also publicizing that. Is everyone in the administration on board with this?

20:38We're seeing kind of a divide within the administration over this. For those who want this really aggressive approach, like GHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her top aide, Corey Lewandowski, for those who really want to see the increase in arrest, they like what Bovino is doing. They like that he's out there. They like that he is basically helping them increase their arrest numbers because Border Patrol is taking such an outwardly aggressive approach. But then you have more traditional ICE officials, more career officials, people who've been there for a long time, who privately have concerns about what this might look like and Border Patrol taking on such an aggressive role and what that might mean for their reputation.

21:24Like, why are they concerned? Because I think there's concern just generally that Border Patrol is more aggressive in the arrest and therefore there's a bigger liability of something potentially going wrong. But I think we are seeing Bovino play a really public role, more public than other administration officials in recent weeks. And I think that's an endorsement of the aggressive approach that he's taking from other officials in the administration. Okay, so there's some internal tension around Bovino, but overall, he's got strong backing from the administration. But outside of the administration, has Bovino faced any kind of challenges legally or even protests for the kinds of tactics being used in his operations, like in Chicago?

22:10So there's definitely been community pushback and there's been pushback from elected officials. And one thing that we've seen in Chicago is there have been a lot of protests and a lot of protests of how Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agents are approaching these immigration arrests and raids. And there have been some clashes between protesters and federal immigration agents. We've seen Border Patrol agents and other federal law enforcement agents deploy tear gas on protesters and journalists and even members of the clergy as they've approached immigration raids in Chicago. And those responses have led to legal challenges.

22:55And a lot of what we're learning about how Border Patrol is thinking about these operations is from information that's coming out of those court cases. One case in particular that we've been watching is a case that's representing journalists, protesters, and members of the clergy, and alleges that Border Patrol and DHS have used excessive force. What is your role in Operation Midway Blitz? What's been interesting is we've learned a lot, too, through this court case because Bovino has actually had to testify. I'm the commander of Operation Midway Blitz, Customs and Border Protection Assets. He had to sit for a videotaped deposition where he had to answer questions about Border Patrol agents' use of force and his responsibilities in Operation Midway Blitz.

23:47Okay. Have there been uses of force that have been less than proper? No, all uses of force have been more than exemplary. I see. and how his agents were responding to protesters. I didn't say that there. I'm asking you a question, sir. It's just a simple question. You have seen a number of uses of force over the course of your time here in the Chicago area, correct? I have seen use of force here. And you have participated in uses of force, correct? I have what? Participated in uses of force. I have used force here in Chicago. Okay.

24:31And Bovino himself was filmed throwing a tear gas canister into a crowd. And he's offered shifting explanations for what happened when he did that. Originally, Bovino said that he was hit by a rock and that he threw the tear gas canister in response. But then he appeared to change that story when he suggested that the rock was actually thrown at him after he threw the tear gas canister into the crowd. And so in response to that, the judge basically said that Bovino was outright lying when he said that he was hit in the head with a rock during the protest. Were there any consequences to the judge saying that Bovino was lying?