Concerns mount over increased violence among federal immigration agents : NPR

There are countless videos on social media showing similar scenes. One, filmed by a photographer in Hyattsville, Md., shows a man pinned to the ground by two ICE officers. He pleads in Spanish and English for someone to help him.

During the incident, one of the officers drops his gun and fumbles for it. Then, he appears to point it at bystanders. Emily Covington, an assistant director in ICE’s Office of Public Affairs, told NPR in a statement that drawing a weapon can be used as a de-escalation tactic.

Another video, from Broadview, Ill., near Chicago, appears to show a man outside an ICE facility getting shot in the head with a pepper ball, a projectile filled with chemical irritants. That man, Pastor David Black, has sued the Trump administration.

Late last month, a local CBS reporter said a masked ICE agent fired a pepper ball at her car at that same facility, causing her to vomit for hours. The reporter, Asal Rezaei, said there was no protest happening at the time. Broadview Police are now investigating.

“These are just the tip of the iceberg,” says Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “People being tackled, people getting pepper sprayed or tear gassed. We’ve seen people getting threatened. And we’ve seen at least two incidents involving gunfire.”

A majority of Americans do not approve of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, according to a recent survey from The New York Times and Siena University. Yet in Chicago, immigrant advocate groups say federal immigration officers are escalating those tactics and becoming more violent.

“This administration overall seems more interested in heightening the tensions instead of trying to ramp them down,” Tsao says.

In late September, federal officers broke down doors and arrested dozens of people during a massive apartment raid on Chicago’s south side.

Earlier this month, federal officers shot a woman in the city, and a few weeks before, they killed a man in a nearby suburb. In both shootings, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said the victims threatened officers. But in body camera footage from the fatal shooting, the officer who responded says his injuries are “nothing major.”

In the case of the woman, her lawyer says officer body camera footage from the incident contradicts that narrative, too. On Thursday, a grand jury indicted her and another man, alleging that they “impeded, intimidated and interfered” with the duties of a federal officer.

“What we’re seeing is a general escalation of violence and the use of excessive force by ICE officers,” says Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at the ACLU of Illinois, which has brought a lawsuit against the Trump administration for violating the constitutional rights of protesters.

In Covington’s statement to NPR, she said ICE officers are “highly trained and act accordingly with law and policy.” The statement also cited a sharp increase in assaults against ICE officers, though reporting from Colorado Public Radio suggests those claims are overblown.

Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Obama administration, says federal immigration officers are not prepared for what is being asked of them.

“They do not have the training or skillset or experience to police an urban environment,” says Kerlikowske, who was also the police chief in Seattle and police commissioner in Buffalo, N.Y.

Good policing in cities, he says, relies on de-escalation, trust and public cooperation. The show of force federal agents are using in Chicago and elsewhere is unnecessary, he says.

“These are tactics and strategies that are clearly not needed to be able to do their job,” Kerlikowske says. “I couldn’t be more disappointed.”

Courts have weighed in on the amount of force a police officer — whether they’re local, state or federal — can legally use, and determined that any use-of-force must be “objectively reasonable.”

“What does it mean to be objectively reasonable? That term by itself doesn’t actually mean anything without context,” says Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who trains police officers.

DHS, which includes ICE, uses that standard. The agency’s most recent use-of-force policy notes that officers should only use force when “no reasonably effective, safe and feasible alternative appears to exist.” Among the agency’s principles are “de-escalation” and “respect for human life.”

For use of force to be constitutional, there must be a valid threat. But threats can range from someone with a gun, to someone resisting arrest, to many scenarios in between. How police respond to a situation also must be proportional to the danger of the situation.

“We look at the situation through the lens of the reasonable officer on the scene,” adds Stoughton. “It might be perfectly reasonable for an officer to step in front of someone, raise a hand and say, ‘Stop. I need to talk to you.’ And it would be totally unreasonable for the officer to put a gun in that person’s face and say, ‘Stop or I’m going to shoot you.'”

Many uses of force can be legally justified, but Stoughton says just because officers can do something doesn’t mean they should.

“I don’t think most people are asking the question, is this action in this particular video consistent or inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment?” Stoughton says, referring to the law that governs searches and seizures, which also protects against excessive force. “I think what they’re asking is, is this a socially and democratically legitimate police action? And that’s a very different question than whether it’s a legal police action.”

Immigrant rights groups in Chicago, including the ACLU of Illinois, say federal agents are violating the law – by using “violent force” against protesters and others.

Because of that, they say it’s important for bystanders to document what they witness, which helps make questions of force a little less open for interpretation.