immigration crackdown

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota prosecutor on Monday announced charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s crackdown in the state.

The officer, Christian Castro, is charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said at a news conference. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

“Mr. Castro is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,” Moriarty said, adding that Sosa-Celis never posed a threat. “There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal officers who commit crimes in this state or any other.”

A federal officer shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after he and another officer chased a different man to the apartment duplex where the man and Sosa-Celis lived. Moriarty said both Sosa-Celis and the other man were legally in the U.S.

Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the incident. But a federal judge later dismissed the charges, and federal officials opened an investigation into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about what happened.

Minneapolis last month released video of the incident captured from a distance by a city-owned security camera.

Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment. Homeland Security previously said that lying under oath is a “serious federal offense” and that making false statements could result in an officer being fired or prosecuted.

The administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Trump’s national deportation campaign. Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, called Operation Metro Surge its largest immigration enforcement operation ever and deemed it a success.

But tensions mounted during the weekslong campaign, and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers provoked mass unrest and questions about officers’ conduct.

Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, has been conducting investigations into multiple incidents and filed charges last month against an ICE agent for alleged actions while on duty.

Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have since clashed over which has the authority to investigate and prosecute officers for conduct while on duty. The Trump administration has suggested that Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction.

State officials have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself or hold officers accountable.

“There’s no modern precedent for what happened to the people here in Minnesota,” Moriarty said Monday. “So it requires a lot of us to dig in and look at ways to hold people accountable that we probably never thought we would be looking at in our careers.”

Hennepin County continues to investigate Good’s and Pretti’s killings and sued the administration in March over access to evidence in the two cases, as well as in the case involving Sosa-Celis. Although Moriarty hasn’t charged anyone in either killing, she has said she’s confident her office’s investigations will bring transparency, even if not criminal prosecution.

Fingerhut and Sullivan write for the Associated Press. Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

WASHINGTON — Most U.S. adults say the United States is no longer a great place for immigrants, according to a new AP-NORC poll, as about one-third of Americans report knowing someone impacted by the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research of more than 2,500 U.S. adults finds about 6 in 10 say the country used to be a great place for immigrants but is not anymore. About one-third of U.S. adults — and more than half of Hispanic adults — say that over the last year they, or someone they know, have started carrying proof of their immigration status or U.S. citizenship, been detained or deported, changed travel plans, or significantly changed routines, such as avoiding work, school or leaving the house, because of their immigration status.

The poll comes as the Supreme Court is considering whether the Trump administration should be allowed to restrict birthright citizenship, as well as following months of sweeping immigration enforcement and mass deportations of immigrants.

Missouri retiree Reid Gibson, an independent, is furious about the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants. He hopes America eventually becomes more welcoming to immigrants again, but he worries “it may take many years to reverse the damage that the Trump administration has inflicted” with its policies.

The poll finds that many Americans know someone who has been affected by Trump’s approach. That includes Gibson’s stepdaughter, who he says started carrying her passport because of concerns that her darker skin would make her a target in immigration crackdowns.

“It’s just plain wrong,” Gibson, 72, added. “This is not a good country for immigrants anymore.”

Americans’ personal connections to immigration enforcement

Many U.S. adults have adapted their lives to heightened immigration enforcement over the last year, as Trump increased detentions and sought to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.

Democrats are more likely than independents or Republicans to know someone affected, and those with a personal connection are more likely to say the U.S. is no longer a great place for immigrants.

Kathy Bailey, a 79-year-old Illinois Democrat, has seen the administration’s immigration policies seep into the small-town swim class she regularly attends. She said two women in the class — both naturalized U.S. citizens — have begun carrying their passports when they leave home. Bailey says one of the women, who is from Latin America, has been especially worried about sticking out in an overwhelmingly white community.

“She’s an American citizen now, but she’s so scared that she has to carry her passport,” said Bailey. “She’s just another sweet old grandmother swimming at 5 in the morning.”

About 6 in 10 Hispanic adults say they or someone they know has been impacted by immigration enforcement in this way, much higher than among Black or white adults.

“This is terrible for these women!” Bailey said. “I’m just stunned at what we are coming to.”

Most believe the U.S. used to be a great place for immigrants

Nick Grivas, a 40-year-old from Massachusetts, said his own grandfather’s immigration to the U.S. from Greece has made him feel the impact of the president’s policies. It’s part of why he believes the U.S. stopped being a promising place for people seeking a new life.

“We can see how we’re treating children and the children of the immigrants, and we’re not viewing them as potential future Americans,” Grivas said.

Roughly 3 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. is a great place for immigrants, according to the poll, while about 1 in 10 say it never was. The belief that America is no longer great for immigrants is more common among Democrats and independents, as well as among those born outside the U.S.

Grivas, a Democrat, worries that federal policies against immigration could stunt the country by discouraging new arrivals from investing in their local communities, especially if they don’t believe they will be allowed to remain.

“You’re less willing to commit to the project if you don’t think that you’re gonna be able to stay,” he said.

Most support birthright citizenship, but also hold nuanced views

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in President Trump’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship by declaring that children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults in the poll say automatic citizenship should be granted to all children born in the country, a view that most Democrats and independents back. Republicans are more doubtful: just 44% support birthright citizenship. The poll also shows that some people are conflicted, saying in general that they support birthright citizenship but also that they oppose it in some specific circumstances.

Among those who object to automatic citizenship is Linda Steele, a 70-year-old from Florida, who believes that only children born to American citizens should be granted citizenship. Steele, a Republican, does not believe foreigners living legally in the U.S. — whether for work or other reasons — should be able to have a child who automatically becomes a U.S. citizen.

“That shouldn’t be allowed,” she said. “They’re just here visiting or going to school.”

When asked about some specific circumstances, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they support birthright citizenship for children born to parents on legal U.S. tourist visas, while only about half support it for those born to parents who are in the country illegally. An even higher share, 75%, support automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country legally on work visas, with much of that increased support coming from Republicans saying this was an acceptable situation.

Kevin Craig, a 57-year-old from Wilmington, North Carolina, does not believe citizenship should be automatically granted. Craig, who leans conservative, believes there should be “at least some opportunity for intervention by a human being who can make some sort of a judgment.”

But he added: “I think my personal opinion is that I can’t think of a situation where it would not be granted.”

Sanders, Sullivan and Catalini write for the Associated Press. Sullivan reported from Minneapolis. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pa. The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.

To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.

The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.

“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before,” said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. “But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”

The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.

Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration’s strategy.

“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.

Immigration arrests have dropped, but deportation goals remain

ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.

But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump’s immigration agenda last year.

The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.

“They are working on really building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump’s strategy.

“President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.

ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Stripping away legal protections to ramp up deportations

Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.

In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.

The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it’s overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.

Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.

ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.

These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.

Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.

Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.

“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.

Calls to enforce work restrictions

Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee’s name doesn’t match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.

Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.

“The numbers are too low,” said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.

“The deportation numbers are just too low,” Howell said, “and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”

Santana writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.