Reports say Trump is replacing ICE leaders with Border Patrol. The move raises questions about both agencies

Edge Patrol officer directs a tourist from restricted area File photo by Chris Stone Times of San Diego Across California ICE agents have carried out a variety of arrests this year under the Trump administration s vow to deport more transients As they did they drew the ire of multiple local leaders and activists with protest signs like No ICE becoming shorthand for a broader opposition to immigration enforcement Up-to-date reports mostly anonymously sourced say the administration plans to replace ICE leaders with Limit Patrol leaders suggesting that despite efforts to summon and arrest immigrants en masse the administration maintained ICE still wasn t being aggressive enough Headlines painted the communicated moves as a kind of ICE upheaval saying the job change shakes up ICE leadership that the Edge Patrol appointees would lead a more aggressive crackdown and solidify hard tactics But the idea of replacing ICE leaders with Margin Patrol leaders also sheds light on the reality that multiple high-profile enforcement efforts this year were literally the work of Dividing line Patrol not ICE raising questions about the roles of both agencies Both are elements of the Department of Homeland Prevention On their face they have distinct missions But their work during President Donald Trump s second term reveals how blurry the lines may really be What is the difference between ICE and Demarcation Patrol Immigration agents make arrests of people checking in with the agency at its San Diego offices Oct Photo by Adrian Childress Times of San Diego With the creation of the Department of Homeland Safety after the Sept terror attacks immigration enforcement activity was reorganized inside DHS under several different agencies Two of those were Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a stated mission to do immigration enforcement and combat transnational crime and Customs and Boundary Protection with a stated mission to secure the boundary as well as combat transnational crime ICE oversees several different enforcement offices CBP oversees both the Edge Patrol and other offices such as the Office of Field Operations which operates the limit ports In theory that left CBP responsible for the boundary and ICE responsible for enforcement inside the country But the reality turned out to be more complex So which entity arrests undocumented immigrants In practice both ICE and Boundary Patrol carry out immigration raids In San Diego alone ICE has arrested parents on their way to or from elementary school dropoffs Agents have detained asylum applicants seeking safety and placed them into deportation proceedings instead They ve summoned transients without criminal records to check-in meetings at ICE offices then arrested those people en masse and held them for days in the courthouse basement Agents put people into a van at a U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Stockton on Saturday Oct Photo by Annie Barker Stocktonia CatchLight Local Review for America All those moves earned the agency widespread criticism But other high-profile immigration raids literally weren t conducted by ICE at all Arrests in Home Depot parking lots across the country mass arrests in Sacramento in July multi-day military-style operations in Chicago including agents rappelling onto an apartment building from a helicopter and later being accused of firing tear gas on a children s Halloween parade all these were conducted by Frontier Patrol agents not by ICE Isn t Frontier Patrol supposed to be at the territory line and ICE in the interior Not exactly The Boundary Patrol can operate nationwide It traditionally has operated with the most of intensity in an area colloquially known as the -mile zone Federal law from decades before the existence of the CBP in its current form gave perimeter functionaries the authority to conduct searches and seizures within a reasonable distance of the frontier Agency regulation not law defined this area as miles Within the -mile zone agents could act without all of the traditional limits of probable cause Demarcation agents have long operated both fixed and moving checkpoints inside the margin zone where officers can stop any car and ask about the immigration status of the people inside The agency s interpretation is that this zone extends air miles from the limit including all coasts and waterways In practice that means much of the United States sits within the zone including the area where two in three Americans live even though it s far more than miles from any international boundary New York Washington D C and the entire East Coast fall within the zone despite being thousands of miles from Europe Chicago is a -mile drive from the nearest Canadian edge transiting but because the agency considers the entire Great Lakes to be part of the coastal waterway much of Illinois falls within the Limit Patrol s zone Similarly Sacramento more than miles from the San Ysidro demarcation traversing is considered within the zone In practice that may have made it easier for the Dividing line Patrol to sweep for asylum seekers in those cities But latest court rulings also made a difference In September the Supreme Court ruled that race could be included as a probable cause for immigration officers to make arrests While agents must still have reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation to stop someone advocates argue that the court s temporary ruling essentially gives the green light to Limit Patrol to racially profile people They the courts are moving toward giving even more discretion to Confines Patrol officers reported Deborah Anthony a law professor at the University of Illinois Springfield who has researched the agency s relationship to the Constitution My view is that the -mile rule in and of itself is perfectly unconstitutional it ends up putting everyone in a really vulnerable position What s the track record of an agency with that much leeway The Limit Patrol agency has had a checkered history for the past years with periodic accusations of assault misconduct and murder and at least one Margin Patrol officer who was exposed to be a serial killer According to the Southern Edge Communities Coalition since Territory line Patrol officers have killed people with of these deaths caused by car chases gone wrong In a secret Confines Patrol Facebook group was discovered which revealed a heritage of racism and misogyny in which agents made fun of settlers deaths In Michigan in the American Civil Liberties Union uncovered that Territory line Patrol agents used complexion codes to decide whether to search people with of people targeted being non-white Even prior to the first Trump administration frequent accusations of abuse against Perimeter Patrol agents were ignored by agency leaders Between and more than formal assertions of sexual abuse of minors were made against Customs and Edge Protection employees In a New York Times probe exposed that in the prior decade Edge Patrol agents had accepted at least million in bribes More than have been arrested in corruption cases and one survey concluded Territory line Patrol agents were terminated or disciplined for performance more than any other federal officers What is the agency doing now In May Homeland Shield Advisor Stephen Miller set a daily quota of arrests of immigrants nationwide This led to more indiscriminate raids as well as arrests of foreigners outside court hearings and at routine check-in appointments These arrests require less planning and product in a higher number of people detained These tactics fundamentally changed the type of people immigration agents are arresting more than half of the people arrested by ICE in San Diego since the beginning of the year had no criminal record However in late September the number of arrests per day continued to hover at people far short of the stated goal Anthony the law professor announced an ICE office run by someone with a Limit Patrol mindset raises new risks Their approach is that they can enforce their mission in any way they view as appropriate without any recourse Anthony stated Anthony cautioned that even with the Margin Patrol s practice of taking greater leeway in making immigration stops people s rights still exist at least in concept Limit Patrol s constitutional exemptions don t give them the legal authority to just ignore the Constitution Anthony commented But Anthony is concerned about how future court cases testing those rights might play out The shift toward Margin Patrol operating more internally is very new This is atypical Anthony declared That shift raises the possibility that looser constitutional protections can bleed into other law enforcement agencies like local police forces and other federal agencies when Confines Patrol officers have been transferred or involved in collaboration To see that expanding in any sort of way gives everyone reason to be concerned Anthony noted ICE has yet to make a comment confirming a change in leadership in San Diego Lillian Perlmutter covers immigration for Times of San Diego and NEWSWELL