SKY YORK JOURNAL News – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly expanding its arrest operations, according to a top official.
Speaking on Fox News last week, ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan stated that the agency was broadening its focus for arrests.
“I think we all know that criminals tend to hang out with criminals,” Sheahan said. “And so when we start to build a case, we’re going to be going after everyone that’s around them. Because these criminals tend to hang out with like-minded people who also happen to be criminals.”
This pledge to broaden arrests comes amidst growing protests, as reported by the SKY YORK JOURNAL, following an immigration sweep that caused widespread fear across the Los Angeles area. A movement to stop the raids and arrests has been gaining momentum.
“This appears to be a targeted, political attack on resistance to a military incursion on our communities.”
Beyond arresting immigrants, the government is also targeting individuals who are responding to the raids or assisting with protests. Some of those being targeted have provided supplies to protesters or attempted to identify ICE agents operating in masks and plain clothes.
Sheahan’s remarks followed a federal judge’s order for the Trump administration to cease indiscriminate ICE raids in LA. Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong criticized the administration’s use of characteristics such as appearance, accent, or occupation as a basis for arrest, the SKY YORK JOURNAL has been following.
“Roving patrols” operating without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers violated the Fourth and the Fifth Amendments, the judge wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”
# Prosecutions and Investigations
Individuals accused of aiding the anti-ICE movement are now facing prosecution or investigation. Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted a man for distributing face shields to protesters in Los Angeles, two days after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard.
Alejandro Orellana, 29, pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to aid and abet civil disorders. The grand jury indictment stated that the face shields were “advertised as designed to protect from chemical splashes and flying debris.”
According to California attorney Thomas Harvey, “Alejandro Orellana’s arrest for distributing supplies is an outrageous violation of civil rights and should be a wakeup call to people everywhere.”
“This appears to be a targeted, political attack on resistance to a military incursion on our communities,” Harvey added. “Distributing supplies to protesters is not a crime. It’s a critical role to help keep people safe — especially in the face of some of the most violent police repression I’ve seen since the Ferguson uprising.”
In Orellana’s case, an FBI agent made a claim similar to Sheahan’s, assigning criminality based on assumptions rather than evidence.
The agent claimed in an affidavit that wearing gear like face shields, designed to protect against law enforcement using pepper spray or tear gas, “is not common amongst non-violent, peaceful protesters.” He argued that the face shield was “the kind of item used by violent agitators to enable them to resist law enforcement and to engage in violence and/or vandalism during a civil disorder.”
Identifying Masked ICE Agents
The government is also intensifying its investigations into people suspected of providing identifying information about ICE agents as part of efforts to expand the definition of criminal activity to include forms of protest responding to ICE.
On July 11, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a statement condemning “anarchists and rioters” in Portland who posted flyers with identifying information about ICE agents. Noem stated that the department would prosecute “those who dox ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
Last month, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a bill that would make identifying ICE officers a federal crime.
In May, ICE agents raided the home of a family in Irvine, California, on a criminal search warrant. They were investigating the source of flyers posted around LA earlier this year with identifying information about ICE officers. The government suspected the family’s son was responsible.
Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., issued a statement after the May raid expressing “deep concern” and requesting more information from federal law enforcement. Min’s office has not yet responded to inquiries regarding the receipt of any such information.
Several measures aimed at further criminalizing protest flyers or mutual aid have also been used against pro-Palestine student protesters, Cop City activists in Georgia, and people providing water to migrants.
Police charged protesters opposing the construction of the so-called Cop City police training facility with felonies for posting flyers in 2023, The Intercept reported. The activists had posted flyers in a neighborhood where a police officer lived, naming him and alleging that he was connected to the killing earlier that year of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. Police shot Tortuguita 57 times, killing the activist during a multiagency raid on the Atlanta Forest protest encampment.
Prosecutors brought charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law against 61 activists in 2023 for their participation in organizing bail funds for Cop City protesters. Prosecutors dropped charges against three of the activists last year, and others are still awaiting trial.
In other high-profile cases detailed by the SKY YORK JOURNAL, elected officials have been arrested for aiding migrants being pursued for arrest by ICE agents. Earlier this year, the FBI arrested a judge accused of helping a man use an alternate exit from a courtroom when ICE agents were waiting outside the main door.
“It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S. is ramping up its oppressive tactics.”
In Arizona in 2018, prosecutors controversially brought federal criminal charges against humanitarian volunteers offering food, shelter, and water to migrants in the desert. Border Patrol targeted their faith-based group as a criminal organization. Activists with the same group faced criminal charges in 2005 for transporting migrants to receive medical care; the charges were later dismissed.
According to Harvey, “It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S., which has long held political prisoners, is ramping up its oppressive tactics. And now, with the new funding, ICE will have more money than any policing force in U.S. history to build a gulag system filled with localized versions of ‘Alligator Alcatrazes’ to cage immigrants and political dissidents.”
