Trump Administration Is Sending Heavily Armed Border Agents To Sanctuary Cities

Elite agents of a Border Patrol unit will be sent to "sanctuary cities" to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to arrest and remove undocumented immigrants, reports said. The heavily armed agents will add to the optics as the Trump administration doubles down on the President's campaign promise to crack down on sanctuary cities.

Sanctuary cities are those that have limited their cooperation with the national government's efforts to enforce immigration law. The Department of Homeland Security had said that "ICE does not have sufficient resources to effectively manage the sustained increase in non-detained cases, which is exacerbated by the rise of sanctuary jurisdictions."

ABC News reported that members of the U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) are deploying in Chicago and New York. Other are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, New Jersey, it said citing an unnamed Customs and Border Protection official.

BORTAC agents are trained for conducting high-risk operations and receive Special Forces-type training including sniper certification. They usually are used to bust smuggling operations and against highly dangerous individuals with criminal records. Reports said Border Patrol squads will back up ICE agents during deportation operations.

The deployments of the elite agents shift the frontline of the battle against illegal immigration from the border to the sanctuary cities. It has been made possible by a decline in unauthorized border crossings. Customs and Border Protection had said the number of people it apprehended at the Southwest border in January declined to 29,200, from 32,858 in December and 33,511 in November.

President Trump promised during his campaign to crack down on sanctuary cities, and followed that up with withholding federal funds for the cities shortly after he took office. The Justice Department also has filed law suits against state and local governments in California, New Jersey and Washington over their sanctuary policies that hinder federal immigration officers.

However, the deployment of the agents away from the border also comes at a time when there is an increase in cross-border drug trafficking. The concern is that the agency's ability to combat drug trafficking will be blunted by the shifting away of manpower.