Every day, news of federal immigration raids, and the protests they attract, pop up across the country. Enforcement blitzes have drawn attention to Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities. In-your-face videos of aggressive tactics repeat — tear gas fired off in city streets, projectiles shot at journalists, children detained.
Sarah Saldaña, a former U.S. attorney in Texas, led Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2014 and 2017 during President Barack Obama’s second term. Her tenure coincided with an influx of Central American families and unaccompanied children showing up at the Southern border, a period in which Obama received the moniker “deporter-in-chief” from immigration rights advocates. She was the last ICE director confirmed by Congress, and the agency has been led by acting heads ever since.
In a conversation with The Marshall Project that has been edited for clarity and length, Saldaña discussed how the agency has operated in past administrations and how it has changed since Trump returned to office earlier this year.
The Marshall Project: When you see ICE on the news today, what goes through your mind as a former leader? What tactics stick out to you?
Sarah Saldaña: We did not do our business out in public. We did not record our operations. Things are different. We weren’t out to make the news.
We were out to enforce the priorities of the administration, which at that time was [focusing on apprehending] terrorists down to aggravated felons, people who had a criminal conviction.
The priorities were not to go to a Home Depot and pick up people standing there waiting for day labor. That’s not something that happened. You planned ahead, and then you carried out the plan. And if you found the person you were looking for, that’s the person you took. It wasn’t a matter of course that you would ask for identification of everybody in the household, let’s say, and haul off people who were not a priority. That’s a very different operation than what’s happening now.
What do you think about the video footage that has been created and shared by Department of Homeland Security agencies like ICE?
I think the videoing is for clips for the evening news. That’s my opinion. All I know is that I’ve never seen ICE on the evening news so much as I have in the last three or four months. We were just as happy to work behind the scenes rather than having the people photographed or videoed. I think [Secretary] Kristi Noem is in half of them. And she’s not even with ICE. She’s with Homeland Security. She’s their boss, but I am not sure why she needs to go out on these operations other than one reason and one reason alone, and that’s advertising.
The secretary of Homeland Security has more important things to do than go out on operations. I can see doing it once or twice. I did it myself, just to know how an operation is conducted, but she’s in an awful lot of these videos. It strikes me as advertising. It strikes me as wanting to get the 15-second video and provide it to the evening news.
What’s your response to footage of the helicopters, flash-bangs and different means of luring people out of their homes during immigration enforcement operations?
I would describe it as “shock and awe.” It is intended. It is a different approach, certainly from what I experienced and from what I was familiar with. Its primary purpose does not appear to be making the community safer. It is intended to instill fear in those who might be subjected to our laws in the immigration area, as opposed to fostering public safety.
Is it effective?
If that’s the way you want to run your country, there are a lot of things that are effective. It’s effective to, like they are doing now, take drug dealers before trial, line them up against a wall, or shoot them in a boat and kill them.
Since September, U.S. armed forces have destroyed 14 boats suspected of carrying drugs off the Central and South American coasts, killing 57 people, according to news reports.
Can ICE do these things?
Well, there are lawsuits all over the country that will test that issue. My personal belief is that a number of them, they cannot. And they will not withstand a legal challenge.
For instance?
The recent Supreme Court decision
In September, in Noem v. Perdomo, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted federal immigration officers to use appearance and racial characteristics among the factors to help establish “reasonable suspicion” that someone might be in the country without authorization in areas like Los Angeles where illegal immigration is “especially pronounced.”
My skin is brown. I speak Spanish fluently. I have been on occasion in old tattered clothes. I don’t think that that should be permitted to stop me — who was born in this country and has lived here for 73 years. I don’t think so, but apparently the law has changed, and profiling is allowable under those circumstances. We’ll see if specific cases are challenged, whether the facts of those cases justify if law enforcement can articulate a reason for stopping that person. It’s a slippery slope as far as I am concerned.
How would you have reacted to an agent stopping people for looking and sounding brown, or like they could potentially be undocumented?
It wouldn’t have been tolerated.
Every administration has a right to set its own priorities. In this administration, it is, “Pick up anybody who is in the country without authorization.” Period. End of story. Even though they say, “Well, we are only after the worst of the worst,” I am sorry, that’s baloney.
What we are seeing today under this administration is extraordinary. It has never been done in this way before. There were already 11 or 12 million people without authorization in the United States before [President Joe] Biden took office. So I don’t know how you can blame President Biden for that. Now, did he let a lot more in? Of course he did. I have little patience for people who try to throw all that in one bag and say, “Look at where this country is now because of Biden.” It’s all the administrations beforehand. And it was the American public who said this is what I want to do. The voting public has a responsibility too.
You recently wrote a letter in The Dallas Morning News, titled “Stop the hate for ICE and for immigrants,” arguing for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that would include a more secure border, reform of asylum restrictions and a “rational plan for allowing people from other countries to work here in jobs our citizens cannot or will not do.”
There is not a thoughtful, informed, methodical approach to immigration. It is slapdash, and as long as we don’t reform the immigration statute, not just through Band-Aids, but wholesale, we are going to continue this way. Every administration kind of comes in and does their thing. It doesn’t mean the future administrations considering comprehensive immigration reform won’t have their own priorities, I am just saying things like asylum can be tightened and accomplished without going after people who are here legally and seeking asylum.
What’s your reaction to Illinois state Rep. Lilian Jiménez, a Democrat, who said ICE has acted like “an invading army,” with helicopters “terrifying families” from above, and in violation of people’s “right to live free from persecution and fear”?
I’d be open to somebody telling me how many times this has been repeated. I’d be open to those facts, but I have a problem with both sides using extreme rhetoric.
This idea that every immigrant who is in the country without authorization should not be dealt with, that’s not the law. The law prescribes that they have broken it by coming to the country without authorization. And remaining in the country without authorization is also illegal. I don’t know why we have to have an extreme on either side — either take everybody down or keep those borders open. There is so much wrong with both of those positions. It’s sad, but that’s where the extreme comes from.
Now this particular legislator, I am equally disturbed by activity like that [which Jiménez described]. I am not willing to say this is happening everywhere and it’s a national crisis. I don’t see it that way.
What do you think when you see federal agents with their faces covered, and the aggressive operations. Does that feel like the same agency to you?
No, no, no. It’s intended for TV. It’s intended for effect. It’s intended to instill fear. The ultimate objective is not legitimate law enforcement, it is to scare people to death. It is effective. There are a lot of people staying in their homes that would ordinarily come out, that are immigrants in the country without authorization. So, it’s effective. But it is disturbing to me to see that. It’s not law enforcement at its best. It’s law enforcement at its most fearful.
Face coverings?
There actually may be a basis for it. I think [immigration officers] are being targeted. Once they are targeted, of course, it’s not just the agent, it’s their families, their homes, getting doxxed. Now the left has provided a basis for those coverings. They weren’t legitimate at first, but now, you know, if I am on an airplane meeting somebody, I am not bragging that I am an ICE agent to anybody because they become targets. That Enforcement and Removal officer is not making policy.
What was Tom Homan, Trump’s appointed immigration czar, like to work with when you ran ICE?
I know him to be a great guy, based on my experience with him up through 2017. Very confident. Knows this area left and right. He is a convert, though, and a believer in this administration. He has always been fiercely loyal to whoever the head is. He was very easy to work with. I worried that he was going to die from a heart attack because he worked so hard. He’s a good human being. I just think he’s a believer in everything that this administration is doing.
He was willing to promote immigration enforcement in the manner that this administration wants, which is unlike anything I have ever seen before. I can’t judge him. I wish he would consider otherwise, but who is to say if you’ve got your own person in there. Expected to follow what the head honcho has to say. So, Tom is doing that.
Reportedly, ICE has increased spending for small arms from about $10 million to $70 million. Was it hard to get money when you were running ICE?
Not really, but our priorities were different. If you are picking up everybody, you are going to need a lot more money for that. Our priorities were, OK, we have $6 billion, we have 34,000 beds approved by Congress. Who should we be focusing on to fill those beds? Do we take a gardener who is working at a landscape company who has a pristine record in this country and has a family and has been here for decades? Or do we focus on the drug dealers, sexual assaults, domestic abuse perpetrators? It’s just prosecutorial discretion. Happens everyday in law enforcement. If we needed more money, we asked for it. Nothing like the numbers being discussed now.
