Why is ICE allowed to impersonate law enforcement

Early Hours of February 26, agents from Department of Homeland Security DHS arrived at Columbia University’s student housing. According to the school, Immigration officers Tell the campus safety staff that they are police officers looking for a missing 5-year-old. But once you enter the building, Agents I knocked on the bedroom door of Azerbaijani student Elmina “Eli” Agayeva. When her roommate opened the door, agents quickly arrested Aghaeva.

At 6:30 a.m., Aghaeva, a social media influencer with more than 100,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram, posted a photo of her legs in the back seat of a car. She said she had been taken before Immigration and customs And he needs help.

Colombia policy Federal agents are not permitted to enter non-public areas of campus without a warrant. However, most immigrant detentions rely on administrative orders, which do not require a judge’s signature. So how did ICE get onto university property? In the hours after Aghaeva’s arrest, as students and faculty rallied against DHS, it became clear that ICE had lied. As it turns out, this is (mostly) legal.

According to reports received from Columbia Spectator, The immigration officers who arrested Aghayeva did not identify themselves as federal agents for the campus security guards.

This wasn’t entirely unusual. Experts who spoke to WIRED say ICE has long been able to lie and even imitate other law enforcement agencies. But with More financing, Detention quotasand Less oversight They are more concerned than ever that ICE may overstep its legal guardrails — and further mislead the public.

At a protest held outside the university in the hours following Agayeva’s arrest, hundreds of people gathered to express their frustration with the university and demand Agayeva’s release.

“If the university actually trained every employee to know what to do, we might all be safer,” says Susan Witt, a social work professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work who attended the protest. She told WIRED that some students and faculty pushed the school to ensure all staff were trained on how to deal with ICE and law enforcement.

But this kind of training doesn’t necessarily matter if ICE misrepresents itself. Sebastian Javinpour, a graduate student member of the Arts & Sciences Student Council who attended the protest, says that while the school has asked campus security to allow federal agents onto campus only under warrants, “it does not deter such actions where DHS misleads the officer on duty. I would argue that DHS agents knew that public safety officers were not allowed entry merely by administrative order, and thus misled them to gain access.”

Aghayeva’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. According to recent posts on her Instagram account, she has returned to school and is also back to posting content.

Acting President of Colombia, Claire Shipman, He said That the immigration officers identified themselves as police and that misleading university staff amounted to a “breach of protocol.” DHS disagrees.

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement,” Lauren Pace, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, tells WIRED. “With regard to Almina Aghayeva, Homeland Security investigators identified themselves verbally and wore visible badges around their necks.”

Lies – or “tricks” – like these have long been common. In 1993, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor to ICE, lured immigrants to a county INS office by telling them they were eligible for a one-time amnesty for being in the country illegally and would be granted a work permit. When the immigrant arrives to collect their work permit cards, they are arrested and deported.