ICE at the Winter Olympics? It's actually OK.
An Explainer
Given the outrages in Minnesota, there’s a lot of umbrage about ICE going to Italy for the Winter Olympics.
It isn’t what it seems.
ICE contains two major components: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI.) The former is exactly what it sounds like. HSI is the nation’s second largest federal law enforcement investigations agency (after the FBI.) They investigate crimes that cross U.S. borders which includes human trafficking, child pornography, international gangs, smuggling, and much, much more. They get pulled into the immigration enforcement work, but it isn’t their primary mission.
They also have a long history of backing up the Secret Service on protection duties. That is what they are going to be doing in Italy at the Winter Olympics.
That’s the quick version. Now for a longer explainer.1
ICE is Deep
The Department of Homeland Security was established after 9/11 by pulling together and recombining agencies from throughout the U.S. government. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein monster and ICE is an exemplar.
ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Before 9/11 the Customs was part of Treasury (revenue collection) and Immigration was under the Department of Justice. But at the border they worked side-by-side. When DHS was established, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was created to combine the border security functions. CBP has its own organizational split between blue (Customs who work at border crossings) and green (Border Patrol who are out in the field.)
Customs also had an investigation arm, this was spun off, redubbed HSI, and joined with the immigration enforcement personnel. This was less of a fit. HSI has generally kept its distance from ERO. When Customs was under Treasury, along with the Secret Service, their investigators were deployed to supplement the Secret Service on protective work. This has also continued through the present.
HSI’s authorities extend to an enormous range of criminal activity (see above). Besides its U.S. field offices, HSI has a strong global presence, working with law enforcement counterparts worldwide. They also do capacity building (helping foreign partners develop their law enforcement capabilities).
HSI also reputation for creative efforts to arrest people abroad, luring suspects in adversarial nations to cooperative third countries.
Being ICE isn’t nice (for HSI)
No one wants to abolish ICE more than HSI. Many of the communities vulnerable to crimes HSI investigates are understandably nervous about talking to immigration authorities. This problem became so acute that in 2018 a letter signed by 19 of the HSI “special agents in-charge” (heads of the field offices) asked the Secretary of DHS to separate the two agencies.
The letter concludes:
The disparate functions performed by ERO and HSI often cause confusion among the public, the press, other law enforcement agencies and lawmakers because the two missions are not well understood and are erroneously combined. ERO’s administrative actions have been mistaken for illegal investigations and warrantless searches. HSI’s investigations have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens, instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross border crimes impacting our communities and national security. Furthermore, the perception of HSI’s investigative independence is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO’s civil immigration enforcement. Many jurisdictions continue to refuse to work with HSI because of a perceived linkage to the politics of civil immigration… HSI is constantly expending resources to explain the organizational differences…
Just as HSI needs cooperation domestically, as a law enforcement agency with an international focus, it needs cooperation internationally as well. The concerns expressed by the Italians are political showboating (the arrangements for the HSI presence had been in place years before.) The recent attempt by ICE to enter the Ecuadorian Consulate in Minneapolis was probably just a dumb mistake. But it adds up. Just as the letter describes, foreign publics and their governments will not make these fine distinctions and they won’t want to cooperate with HSI on their important transnational missions.
It may be counter-intuitive to think of a law enforcement agency in terms of soft power, but much of HSI’s work is exactly that—helping other countries with transnational criminal challenges that hurt their own populations. Perhaps the best example is my favorite HSI mission, countering antiquities smuggling. HSI investigates these cases and repatriates cultural property to their country of origin. HSI also trains countries to counter antiquities smuggling and protect their cultural heritage.
The toxicity of the Trump administration’s decisions will increasingly brand even benign work by the U.S. government, eviscerating American soft power, making international cooperation less and less possible.
This is not a byproduct of the administration’s policies: it may very well be the point.
I worked with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate as a contractor for about eight years. I got to see a lot of different parts of DHS, including ICE. I’ll avoided writing about DHS issues while I was a contractor, but I’m free now and will write some more in-depth stuff soon. But don’t worry, it’ll still be mostly about vice presidents.