A former leader of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division sounded the alarm on Sunday after immigration agents shot and injured a man they were trying to apprehend in New York while the individual’s 5-year-old son was in the car.
On Friday, ICE agents shot and injured 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in Brooklyn, New York. Mark Morales of CNN reported on Sunday that the bullet is still lodged in Belgal’s neck and his face is still numb from the incident.
John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, sounded the alarm about the incident in a new interview on CNN. He noted that it appeared an office from the Immigration Enforcement Division was responsible for the shooting, which is a team that has historically never conducted the kind of work that the Trump administration is asking them to do now.
“In fact, almost every single one of these shootings, it’s been that particular unit,” Sandweg said. “And so while the Secretary talks about how every agency does undercover operations, that is true, except this unit never historically did this. This is a new phenomenon we’ve seen in the trump administration. And what concerns former colleagues of mine at ICE and me is that we see this particular unit engaging in tactics that are outside of their experience and outside of their training, and that’s reflected in the plans and the tactics and these aggressive uses of force.”
Sandweg also noted that it will take to stop more ICE shootings from occurring.
“The bottom line [is that] we need to see ICE revert back to those tactics that historically they did, which is primarily focusing on people who are already in prison and jail, taking them into custody in a secure environment there,” Sandweg said. “And when you do these at-large operations, doing them in a way that’s safe and secure, doing it early in the morning outside their residence.”
“I think we have another political factor here driving a lot of this, and that is these quotas and this pressure that ICE is under to hit certain targets in terms of how many arrests,” he continued. “I don’t think we should underestimate the role that is playing in pushing these agents to be so aggressive and taking risks that they otherwise wouldn’t take.”
“It’s not just risks to the immigrants who are being arrested … it’s a risk to the officers themselves,” he added. “These tactics put everyone in a little bit more danger.”
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