Are those really ICE agents?

Questions abound about the true identity of the immigrant kidnappers. Is it ICE or militia or January 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump as many in social media are claiming?

I have spent a fair amount of time on Bluesky this week answering questions about the ICE agents and the raids. Many of you do not understand the basics of immigration law. You seem to think that immigration and criminal law are the same. I don’t blame any of you for this. You all have been sold a bunch of bullshit by the media. Here is the truth.

Those people don’t look like federal agents. Why are they so out of shape?

Many of you seem to have the impression that federal immigration agents from ICE, Border Patrol and CBP look like roided out body builders. This is because you have been subject to ridiculous anti-immigrant propaganda by these agencies for decades. Only the Border Patrol requires a high standard of fitness and that is only to graduate the academy. There are no fitness standards for agents in ICE, Border Patrol or CBP after graduating the academies if they are not in special response units. Most federal agents have mom and dad bods. The agency just doesn’t use these agents for advertising and propaganda films. All these agents below are actual Border Patrol agents.

Are there enough federal agents to be doing all of these violent kidnappings?

Border Patrol and ICE combined have about 33,000 armed agents. CBP has close to 26,000 armed officers, 586 air interdiction officers, 364 marine interdiction officers and 363 aviation enforcement agents bringing their total to just over 27,000 armed officers. In all, the three immigration agencies have about 60,000 armed law enforcement officers.

Now take into account that in February, Trump ordered federal agents working on dangerous narcotics seizures and other violent crimes to work on immigrant kidnappings and forced disappearances. I have witnessed FBI, ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), US Marshals and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) on these kidnappings. That is another 13,700, 2,500, 4,600 and 3,800, respectively. Now we are up to 84,600 armed federal law enforcement officers. This does not include the other 123 agencies (130 agencies in total) that employ federal law enforcement officers.

Now add to that total those that Trump is enlisting assistance from state, municipal and county agencies. Whether that is as protection for immigration agents or taking possession of kidnapped individuals’ property in seizures or holding victims in their jails, and I think you get the picture.

The answer to the question of if they have enough feds to make these arrests you are seeing is yes, because of the state and local help. Additionally, Border Patrol agents have been freed up on the borders because of low crossings and Trump ordering the military to seal the southern border. I just came back from the Tucson and California borders with Mexico, and I observed military taking over Border Patrol’s civilian policing in between the ports of entry.

Are they militia, vigilantes, January 6ers?

Some have stated to me on social media that there has been proof of the government using militia or vigilantes from the various arrests of people pretending to be immigration police. There have been a handful of these arrests made of people cosplaying as ICE, but there is a distinct difference between these impersonations and actual immigration kidnappings. The impersonations were one or two people as opposed to the gangs of feds we have seen in recent videos, and those victims are not being placed in immigration custody.

I recognize that this point is not much comfort to people affected by these wannabes, but it is not unusual for predators and racists to impersonate immigration officials. It happens every year, multiple times to many different agencies. As linked in the story above, these impersonators are arrested as it is a serious offense to impersonate a federal officer. In other words, these incidents are not evidence that the actual immigration kidnappers are not feds.

To date, neither I nor other experts such as Jessica Pishko have seen evidence of contracted militia or others being used to make arrests. This is not to say that Border Patrol has not in the past, is not working with militias currently or will not in the future. I witnessed agents working with militia in the 90s, and I have intelligence documents showing they did as well during the Obama years and that management knew many of their agents belonged to the same militias.

Intelligence documents from 2014 showing Border Patrol works with militia and even has agents who are members.

I have witnessed the Border Patrol Union using militia for intelligence gathering and surveillance. Here is the Union’s vice-president, Art del Cueto harassing samaritans who provide food and water for migrants while waiting on Border Patrol to pick them up. Del Cueto is making videos with militia leaders telling viewers on Rumble that samaritans are child traffickers.

Sasabe, Arizona border. Border Patrol Union VP Art del Cueto (middle) with militia leaders Craig Sawyer (left) harassing a senior samaritan for providing water to migrant families. Taken December 2024.

Here is del Cueto spreading lies and disinformation to militia on their Rumble channel to encourage violence against samaritans or anyone who tries to save a migrant’s life. Del Cueto did this on government time while representing the agency’s union. Samaritans did not write these things on these tents as most don’t even speak Spanish very well or any of these languages seen here. This video was recorded in December of 2024.

And while there’s no doubt the Border Czar Tom Homan has ties to Proud Boys and the Mayhem Militia, there’s so far been no evidence they are using them to arrest migrants in this mass deportation.

Why do they not use arrest warrants?

If the arrest is for an immigration violation and does not require entry into a domicile, immigration agents are legally allowed to stop and question anyone’s citizenship within 100 miles of any land or water border with only “reasonable suspicion” of “illegal alienage” according to US law. Those phrases are in quotes because those are legal terms used by the immigration agencies.

There are two different types of laws concerned here: civil and criminal. In criminal law, laws are enforced by peace officers. This is your local police, sheriffs, state troopers, FBI, DEA, ATF, etc. Criminal law includes violent crimes, theft, fraud, traffic violations etc. Immigration is considered civil law because traditionally taking away one’s right to be in the US for violating laws and sending them back to their home countries is not considered by the courts to be a punishment. Obviously, things have changed since the late 1700s when this was decided, and there are now severe punishments to being undocumented, but this is why immigration is seen as civil law and this concept still holds in our system.

Unlike criminal law where peace officers must believe they have seen you commit a crime to stop you or have a warrant signed by a judge showing that they have enough evidence to arrest you for a crime (probable cause), immigration law does not require warrants unless they are going to enter a home. Why? Because immigration is civil law and because the Supreme Court has held in three different cases that immigration officials can consider the color of someone’s skin to stop them and question them on their citizenship (reasonable suspicion). The Supreme Court’s reasoning given at the time was based on the proximity to borders and that most who crossed our borders illegally were from Mexico.

Now, I have never agreed with this concept, even as an agent. The US Constitution either protects everyone within its borders, or it does not. Living within 100 miles of any land or water border should not allow the government to racially profile or reduce your constitutional rights. Additionally, times have changed. People from all over the world come to our borders today. People of all different races, religions and ethnicities. This is no longer the Border Patrol of my day when most of the faces were from Mexico. When I look at the faces in the shelters today, they are of every shade.

The fact is that the law does not require immigration officers to have an arrest warrant if the arrest is affected outside of a domicile.

So, if they are really federal agents, why are they masking?

Unfortunately, ICE, Border Patrol and CBP have extremely poor hiring standards. Most agents come straight from high school or the military and have little if any knowledge of the law. I knew agents who could barely read, and I often was ordered to write their narratives on stops because they could not. Border Patrol allows its agents to act as recruiters, instructors and terminators. In other words, they control who gets in and stays in. This means they self-select. They only hire like-minded people. Therefore, there is no dissent.

Additionally, they use private companies to do the background checks on new hires. This allows them to maintain plausible deniability when it turns out their Tucson Sector Chaplain had been convicted of raping a child before they hired him and then continued as an agent to produce child pornography, rape his daughters and God knows how many unaccompanied kids during his 17 years of service. It allows them to ignore that Steven Holmes had existing complaints against him for sexual assault and strangulation for him only to continue during his time as an agent. These criminal agents and many more are still being protected by Border Patrol management who refuses to answer how many complaints these agents had in their time in service.

Some are masking because many are criminals themselves, but most are doing it because they know they are sending these people, the vast majority of whose only infraction is a civil immigration violation that is at best a misdemeanor, to foreign torture prisons or back to dangerous countries without due process. They know they are separating families. They know they are violating the law and are afraid of accountability in the future and harassment of themselves and their families. They do not want to be targeted.

So, why are they doing this job if they know they are wrong?

Because most do not have any skills outside of rounding up immigrants and violating their rights. They cannot make over $100,000 a year in any other job and support their families without destroying others. So, they justify their brutality as I used to: It’s the law. There’s a legal way.

The only problem is there is no legal way, and they know this.