The Trump administration plans to pull some U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers away from the country’s ports of entry to enlist them in inland immigration raids, according to a memo obtained by HuffPost.
An agency official said they are looking for “high-performing” officers to volunteer for a six-month detail assisting the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department in what he called “Operation At-Large.” The assignment would start May 21.
“This operation is a high priority of the administration and will focus on the arrests of illegal aliens with executable final orders of removal,” Christopher R. Holtzer, executive director of operations at CBP’s Office of field operations, wrote in the memo dated Wednesday.
CBP officers are not normally tasked with trying to hunt down undocumented immigrants in the nation’s interior. Instead, they’re responsible for protecting ports of entry along the northern and southern borders and the coasts from terrorism, human trafficking and drug smuggling.
But the Trump administration has made a huge political priority out of boosting arrests of people in the country without authorization. Trump campaigned on a promise to carry out mass deportations and has even tried to invoke wartime powers to justify expelling people with or without due process.
