Former ICE Officer Blasts Trump's Minneapolis Crackdown

0:00If you know any law enforcement officers, law enforcement officials, cops, current or former, you know that they tend not to criticize one another. There's a lot of solidarity in the law enforcement community in this country. That's not always the case, though, and it doesn't happen to be the case with regard to what we're seeing with ice enforcement in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Today, I want to present to you a conversation I had with a former ice field officer who worked across administration, starting with the George W. Bush administration, ending in the Trump 2 administration. And he has a warning for this administration about how it's conducting its immigration policy.

0:36Take a look. This country was stone cold dead. Good day once again from the top of the World Trade Center at Newsweek headquarters here in New York City. I am Carlo Versano and this is The 1600. So we're coming on here. Today is Tuesday. We're coming on a couple of days removed from the killing of Alex Preddy by immigration agents working on behalf of the federal government in Minneapolis over the weekend. This is a story that obviously everybody has heard about. It's a story that's really broken through in a way that many other stories during the Trump administration just haven't. And that includes the killing of Renee Good, also by immigration officials, just a couple of weeks prior in that same city.

1:15So we've heard a lot from the pundits out there, the politicians, but I feel like the media hasn't heard enough from actual law enforcement, former law enforcement, both at the federal level and the local level. So I wanted to get a view from one of those officials, a former ICE official. So I'm speaking today with a man named Darius Reeves. Darius is a retired longtime ICE official who worked as a field office director under four presidents, five administrations, starting in the George W. Bush administration, then going all the way to the second Trump administration, at least for a little while until he retired last summer.

1:51Darius, welcome and thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And I got that all right. You started back in the Bush years and you retired last year. That's correct, right? That is correct. So you've been around the block. You know federal law enforcement, you know immigration enforcement, presumably pretty well, having been through 20 years of it. And let me preface this conversation by, you know, I just want to get this out there, right? I respect the job of law enforcement. I really do. It's a tough job. I have family members who are cops. Immigration enforcement is a little bit different, obviously.

2:29It's the purview of the federal government. It operates in a different way than your local state law enforcement would. But, you know, I'm really upset, Darius, by what's happening in this country in the aftermath of what we saw in Minneapolis on Saturday. Just I want to hear first from you, you know, because you've been around for so long and been at that agency under so many different administrations. What is the biggest difference that you're seeing today versus when you were working for ICE? Yeah, excellent question. So I'm going to lay this out because we need to make clear distinctions. Okay.

3:09Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security, there are two distinct, when it comes to law enforcement, there are two distinct. So you have Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and you have the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. So there are two distinct law enforcement entities that fall under Homeland Security. That's enforcement and removal operations, identify, target, arrest, detain, remove. You have Homeland Security investigations, long-term complex investigations, alien smuggling, child exploitation, fentanyl, copyright infringement. Then on the opposite, all the Department of Homeland Security, you have a separate side, and that's the Customs and Border Protection side.

3:59That's the United States Border Patrol, the Office of Field Operations, and the Air and Maritime Group that assists the Border Patrol, all of whom have different levels of training and to some extent, different missions sets. Although everything falls under Title 8 of the United States Code when it comes to immigration enforcement, but there has to be some very clear distinctions. So throughout this whole process, we kept hearing ICE, ICE, ICE. But specifically, who are you referring to in ICE? There is Border Patrol, and I want to make also that needs to be understood. The United States Border Patrol's jurisdiction is from the southern border up to 100 miles from said border.

4:50The United States Border Patrol's jurisdiction, the northern border, down to 100 miles of said border. At 101 miles, 102 miles, 103 miles from any out of those borders, Border Patrol has to have probable cause and articulate probable cause by which to engage you. Along the border, there are no Fourth Amendment considerations. Whereas interior enforcement, homelands security investigations, enforcement removal operations, we have Fourth Amendment considerations and restraints. So, and I'm going to be very loud and clear when I say this. Of my decades of experience, and this is not to be disparaging to the Border Patrol.

5:32Anytime, every time, you involve the Border Patrol into the exterior of the United States, the wills are going to fall off. And then once again, that harkens back to the levels of training. The Border Patrol has a very arduous task on that border. They, you know, daily, they're interacting with cartel shootouts and, you know, major, major loads of folks coming across. They have to have a more aggressive approach in law enforcement. Sure. and quick on the spot and very aggressive. Fourth Amendment, there are no considerations along the border, which is opposite in interior. And when you bring that type of mentality, you bring that type of training into the interior of the United States, you're going to have the issues that we are seeing play out before us.

6:25It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. I don't know. Like I said, I'm no longer privy to internal communications with DHS and the White House as I would have been before. But it's unfortunate that senior ICE leadership, and they may have, didn't push back on whomever this bright idea came from. Whatever political appointee felt that they knew the job better or had a better understanding or what have you. um no this is not now they can augment we've have worked with them they have come into the tier and they have augmented you know some of our operations but they're always under the command and control of either the field office directive enforcement removal operations or the special agent in charge from homeland security um investigations if that's how they were being utilized so so this is a very important point right this is a very important point that i want to make sure that people understand, right?

7:28Because the agents who killed Mr. Preddy in Minneapolis, we don't know their names. We do know, and not because they were wearing identifying patches or anything, we'll get to that, why that's a problem in a minute, but we know that they were operating under the purview of Customs and Border Patrol. And again, as you just mentioned, the last time I checked, Minneapolis is not within 100 miles of the northern border of the United States, right? So these guys were put in there by a political appointee, whether that was Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski or whomever else is sort of running this show with, you know, they basically put CBP in charge of this operation in Minneapolis, even though it should be ICE.

8:07Is that fair? That is fair to say. That's excellent. That's an excellent point. And I think that that's a very important thing because, as you mentioned, CBP has different levels of training. They're operating at a different jurisdiction without the constitutional norms that we would expect by local law enforcement. So you make all of those points excellent. I do want to ask you something. You told Reuters on the 10th of January. So this was a couple days removed from the shooting of Renee Good. That was, I believe, an agent working for ICE. So you had this quote to Reuters, quote, we should not be flooding these neighborhoods and antagonizing people.

8:46This is not going to go well, end quote. Obviously, that was very prescient. You were very right about that. What was it about this operation in Minneapolis that set off your internal alarm bells just as a law enforcement professional? It was too loud. It was poking the bear. You know, coming up the ranks, we were known as the and took great pride in it, known as the silent service. um you know i spent time on in the buffalo um new york field office which is a border city no one had an idea who or what ice was i saw the build-up yeah you know the back and forth rhetoric the um you know the the politicians going back and forth at one another and all this peripheral language.

9:36When we operated, especially with enforcement removal operations, we operated very clandestine. We had targets. We did our homework. We knew who was who, what was where, what they were driving, things of that nature. And we planned out the best possible way into which to apprehend this individual considering every possible scenario here you have folks walking up on people in some of your papers you know the the flooding of the home depots um you it's just i saw the build-up and i was like this is not how things are supposed to go supposed to be and specifically what kept bothering me was that no one was making these clear distinctions on who the boots on the ground actually are there's a difference between ice and customs and border protections and um and and it's a lot of miscommunication or lack of communication you know you're hearing people say well they've never committed a crime in the united States.

10:48That may very well be true. However, they have matriculated through their immigration process. An immigration judge has ordered them removed. And now we're executing that removal. So there's a lot of miscommunication going on. And I felt is that if you're going to do these major, major operations, well, in advance, you need to be coordinating and communicating with, You know, your state and local officials, but my wish is your target area. There needs to be, you know, there's a, I says, public affairs office officers that are assigned to field office as well as community relations officers that are assigned to field office.

11:31Those people should be out engaging their counterparts in the local area. And for me, it was just too loud. why does everybody know what's going on and you just saw this build up and on both sides, clear, both sides both sides, to be sure, although it is President Trump who ordered this operation in Minneapolis despite Minneapolis not being a particular hotbed of illegal immigration he's not doing this in Texas Right. He hasn't been you know, he hasn't been going after the businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Theoretically, this is about going after the Somali community in Minneapolis. At least that was the you know, that was the line that was given to us.

12:20Although those people are for the most part either citizens or here with legal status, which is why you're not actually seeing these guys, these ICE guys in Minneapolis apprehend any Somalis. But what they appear to be doing is is just doing what you said and, you know, sort of doing it, you know, smash and grab or turn and burn operations, as Greg Bovino called them. So here's the here's the question based on what you just told me that that I have and a lot of readers who have emailed me have. They have a lot of questions just about, you know, Barack Obama, whom you worked under in ICE, deported millions of people.

12:53Right. He was he was called the deporter in chief by the left. He took a lot of heat from the left about his deportation numbers. He was able to do that without any real broad-based controversy, including the fact that none of his ICE agents didn't shoot and kill anybody, at least not that I know of, while Trumps have already shot and killed two American citizens in the span of a month. My question to you is how was Obama, how were you guys able to do these various enforcement actions without all of this controversy and without the actual street protests that are leading to this violence? It was professional.

13:27although a lot of us didn't agree entirely with uh uh president obama but yes we were very professional and we had clear distinctions national security threats public safety threats all of that makes sense and that's why he was so successful and and and we were extremely successful and was very interesting i also want to keep quite tom holman the borders are He was the acting ICE director during President Obama's tenure, and he received an award, a presidential award, for his immigration efforts that were very successful. It was just interesting how President Trump comes into play, and then Mr.

14:12Holman does a complete 180 in his approach and the language. That's a great point, and it leads me to my next question about Mr. Holman. And so, you know, we've seen this shake up over the last 24 hours or so. Greg Bovino, the CBP, you know, commandante that was sort of running the show there. He's been sidelined. Holman's in now. Holman has a direct line with the president. President Trump saying that he he reports to me. That's obviously a, you know, demotion to Kristi Noem, the head of DHS, whether or not it's, you know, message that way or not. She's obviously been sidelined here. So I think this is a recognition from, you know, from Trump that this has spun out of control and it's now a political liability for him.

14:51But my question is back to Holman. You must have worked with him during the Obama years. Was he the guy who he is today?

15:05No. Let me put it another way. Let me put it another way. From everything that I've read, I mean, I think that Holman, you know, perhaps comes across as, you know, maybe, you know, he has sort of like the, as you said, like he speaks in sort of like Trump's language now. But he is a professional ICE and immigration enforcement official who, like you, has been around the block, has been doing this for a long time. Do you believe that with him in charge in Minneapolis now that we could see a lowering of tensions on the ground since he knows what he's doing? I'm not sure. I think the carnage is in place.

15:44you you also have to remember that um homin was the chief architect of this new immigration push um trump 2.0 um you got it's a face of politicians you know i will come and arrest you and things of that nature so i i think it's everything's on thin ice and i i'm not sure what is his true mandate now what what is his i mean what is he gonna what temperature is he gonna lower now they're politicians and i'm sure they're being their backroom card games being played as we speak but um he's he was championing that banner and people are going to remember that yeah well let's leave it there on homin and let's see what he does but i think you're right that the the genie might be out of the bottle here.

16:37And, and it's a great point. What is what is the mandate at this point, right? Politically speaking, you know, Trump has a very hard time back, you know, coming across as though he's backing down. But at the same point, you already are sort of seeing a little bit of a back down here. So I think, you know, hopefully, the polling is showing him that this is just kind of spun out of control. And hopefully, you know, Homan can go in there and add a little bit of professionalism. But speaking of professionalism, I want to ask about the masks. and we've talked about this with other guests, you know, to me, this is sort of the original sin of what's happening right now is that these guys just aren't identifying themselves.

17:08Put aside the mess, right? There's no badges. There's no name tags. You know, cops, cops are, cops don't do that, right? The NYPD during the height of the riots in the summer of 2020 here, they were getting spit on. They weren't masked, right? They had their badges shown. My understanding is when you were doing ICE enforcement during the Obama years, and even during Trump one, there were no masks, right? Is that correct? That is correct. So I guess I don't even know if this is a real question. I guess I'll just put it to you. I mean, it's to me, it's uniforms matter, right? It's like when you're if you get dressed like you're going to go invade Fallujah, then it's going to it's going to come across like you're a soldier and you're not a cop.

17:50When even though federal law enforcement might be different from sort of like, you know, working the beat as a local cop, it's still law enforcement and it's the militarization of law enforcement that is what's scaring me right now. And I suspect that a lot of cops, former and current cops, would agree with that. They didn't sign up to be soldiers. They signed up to be cops, right? Absolutely. You're absolutely correct. I believe the maskings has to do with what it started out with the, once again, this rhetoric, and they opened up, they pulled every federal law enforcement agency together to do this mass immigration you know what you saw in dc and the things of that nature correct correct so you you if you you're bringing in fbi dea atf um a lot of those groups and because of the way they had to do it a lot of those groups within themselves they have missions that involve undercover work so here you have a um an atf or a dea agent who's been assigned to assist and the uh federal immigration push whose face is now revealed that it may not be with as a dea agent but he is a law enforcement agent and he may have been pulled off of a case which that was going on to assist um ice and their early on in their endeavors so a lot of these other agencies who have active cases a lot of their people were pulled off because there was a major push and um people get identified

19:40that's my wholehearted belief of what's going on with those maskings and why those maskings came into play. It was to protect those augmented federal agencies and how for some reason it just stayed with us. And it's very interesting that you say that. And we're going to circle back to Mr. Holman. I saw an interview he did not too long ago with Chris Como. And they specifically asked about the mask. And Holman specifically said, yeah, this is an idea, but we're getting doxed we're getting doxed we're getting doxed right so they're they're they're not they're not telling the true story so i think that's a very this all of this was poorly planned from day one and i think that that is the the they can't get control over it well that you know i haven't heard anyone actually make that point about how the masks were sort of you know part of this like augmented force and it just kind of spread to everybody.

20:39And that's why you have, you know, none of these guys are identified. You know, it's the thing that scares me for the country, as well as for law enforcement officers is, you know, what's going to happen when there's a, a, you know, no knock raid, these guys come barreling through the door in their, you know, balaclavas and their tactical gear. And some got someone shoots them because they don't know who they are. I mean, I don't want to even put that out into the world because I, God forbid that would have happened, but it just seems like we are escalating this to a situation where that almost is a guaranteed outcome.

21:13And I hope I'm wrong about that. But Darius, let's go back to the quotas and the goals, because that's a very important point that you made. So Trump has said they want a million deportations a year, 3 ,000 arrests a day. I believe those are Stephen Miller's quotas, Stephen Miller's quota that he put in earlier in the administration. If you were working, if you were running ICE or if you were running DHS and the White House came to you and said, we need you to arrest 3000 people a day, what would your response be? Is that even physically feasible? It's not going to happen. That would be my response.

21:47How is that? I doesn't even have the infrastructure to hold that amount of people. You know, it's a much bigger issue than arresting, than just arresting. Now you have to detain folks. Where are you going to detain these type of numbers. You're going to have to have countries, you know, where these, exactly where these people are coming from. So you're going to have to have just strong relations with foreign countries to repatriate. You're going to have to move folks and quite, and you don't have, you're not going to make 3000 arrests a day nationwide per field office. It's never going to happen.

22:26um you would be lucky if nationwide we do a uh a targeted enforcement activity every field office involved for numbers you would be lucky if at the end of a week of that operation nationwide 25 field offices that you got 1500 collective arrests from that nationwide 25 field offices

23:00and actively pursuing targets. It's a fool's errand. It's a make-believe number. You're not going to repatriate a million people a year. It's never going to happen. Well, so here's what scares me, right? Because those numbers are out there, and this is what we're seeing right now. is happening really before ICE is even getting the full money that was appropriate to it in the latest in the spending bill, the big, beautiful bill that year, which Congress gave them$75 billion. That's just for ICE through 2029 on top of a$10 billion a year budget. The administration was touting 12 ,000 new hires in four months.

23:44They're getting, I mean, they are doing a good job, I guess you could say, in terms of recruiting people because they're offering generous signing bonuses, loan forgiveness, overtime pay per diems, et cetera. But this leads me to my next question, which is the people that they are hiring. The training has been shortened from what I understand to be five months of rigorous training when you come aboard ICE to 47 days, which is now down to 42 days. There was one report that new recruits spend now a grand total of four hours on de-escalation tactics during their training. Some of these guys I read in the Atlantic today, they're coming in the door.

24:21There's former ICE agents saying these people wouldn't be able to, we wouldn't even give them a first round interview, right? They're out of shape physically. They have questionable tattoos that might make you wonder what their real motives are, all sorts of reasons. So I don't know what my question is there for you, Darius. I guess the question is, if you were running DHS right now, what would be your first sort of business in actually tightening this ship when it comes to recruitment yeah you you the mass recruitment is is a debacle it's it's it's you have to stick with the standards and you have to stay with sad standards i understand the campaign promises i understand the numbers and you know more boots on the ground let's get our number get our numbers but it it was

25:12political appointees need to stop they need to listen to the career professionals i get it every administrator comes in with an agenda and and and it is what it is but once these political appointees try to take over and what they're doing you are having the issues that you're having it's not going to be any mass recruitment um maybe we want to extend but our processes will our vetting will remain the same and you will have to go to the academy the same. You're just not going to get that mask now. You can maybe make some considerations for prior law enforcement successfully. You could maybe put overall fresh folks off the street.

26:05Yes. and a lot of those folks that got there they either fell out academically they fell out physically and there were stories some of them actually had warrants from other jurisdictions while they were sitting in a nice academy class so yeah it's just it was it was too ambitious there's people not understanding the integrity of this agency. People are not fully appreciating the importance of this agency. And you cannot weather down standards. You cannot flush everyone through. There has to be a vetting.

26:53You're right. I will stick with that. No, I think that's a good answer. Can you be DHS secretary? Can we get you back in there? Are you free? I don't, uh, this, we would be at, we would guys like me and Steve, uh, going up against Steven Miller. That would have been a real thing. Guys like me going up against Corey Lowe and Dasty. That would have been a real thing at meetings. Um, and, and a lot of the rehired annuitants that, that didn't have the background came on. I'm hearing that they're walking out. They're saying enough of this. I don't want to be associated with this. This is not the agency that I came, that I grew up in and that I was hoping to come back to to provide.

27:36It's just a hot mess. Well, I mean, so that's another good point that you make. And so I've heard this through, I've heard this anecdotally from people I know here in New York who work with police, who work with some of the police unions in New York City and around New York City. And what they've said to me is that rank and file cops, right, not ICE, not federal law enforcement, but regular cops are furious right now because they're what they're saying is, you know, most regular people, they don't make a distinction. I mean, even if you even if these guys weren't masked and you could were wearing name tags and badges, regular people aren't making a distinction between ICE or CBP or ATF or even your local beat cop.

28:17And what that what they're saying, again, from sources that I've heard here in New York is they're saying that's putting them in danger. That's putting their families and their jobs in danger because you're going to get people out there who are going to go hunting for cops because they see all cops as being the same, not to mention the fact that it's just hurting law enforcement writ large, right? I mean, you know, it's going to hurt recruitment. It's going to hurt morale. And I mean, speaking of morale, these are a couple of anonymous quotes I took down that former ICE guys gave to the journalist Ken Klippenstein.

28:48Here's one quote. We can't always support what happens just because it's one of us. That was an anonymous ICE agent in a group chat that was linked to Ken Clippenstein. Another one, quote, this was about the Preddy murder shooting. They all carry belts and vests with 9 ,000 pieces of equipment on them, and the best they can do is shoot this guy in the back, end quote. And the last one, lots of people are freaking out. Agents are getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by retaliators. That one scares me, right? Because these guys are already trigger happy, and before you add the element of them thinking that they're fighting an actual domestic insurgency.