Here’s what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are allowed to do, following the detention of the wife of a US army sergeant during an appointment at an immigration office in El Paso, Texas.
Deisy Rivera Ortega, who is originally from El Salvador and is married to Sgt First Class Jose Serrano, was recently taken into custody by ICE. The detention occurred even though she reportedly received legal protection in 2019 that prevents her from being deported to her home country.
“I don’t really understand why, because she followed the rules of immigration by the T since day one,” Serrano told CBS News following his wife’s arrest.
According to CBS News, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Rivera Ortega entered the United States illegally. Serrano, however, said he believes his wife could be removed to another country — such as Mexico — despite having no connection there.
Serrano added to CBS: “I love the army. [The] army helped me out for almost 28 years. It’s not the army, sir. It’s ICE.
“ICE is out of control right now, sir, taking away rights, as soldiers, that we have.”
In recent months, ICE’s reach — and what the agency can legally do under the Trump administration — has come under renewed scrutiny, particularly after the controversial deaths of Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Pretti during encounters with officers earlier this year.
Jennifer Whitlock, an immigration policy expert and senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, told Time that many ICE arrests rely on administrative warrants. These aren’t the same as traditional criminal arrest warrants, but they can still authorize detention.
Whitlock also told the outlet that officers can sometimes make arrests without administrative warrants when, as she described it, ‘the immigration officer has a reason to believe that the person is in the US unlawfully and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained’.
She added that some ICE agents interpret that standard broadly, including treating people in vehicles as potential ‘flight risks’, which can be used to justify detaining them.
“We’ve seen so many novel interpretations of DHS authority over the last year,” the immigration officer added.
Emmanuel Mauleón, a University of Minnesota Law School professor who specializes in this area, told Time that ICE officers are only allowed to use ‘deadly force’ when they face the threat of serious injury or death.
“It’s a high standard, but courts tend to be fairly deferential to officers’ perceptions,” he added.
DHS guidance available on the department’s website states that ICE officers ‘are permitted to use force to control subjects in the course of their official duties as authorized by law, and in defense of themselves and others’.
The same guidance says officers must keep any use of force within what is considered ‘objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances’.
When allegations of misconduct arise, both federal and state authorities may open investigations into what happened.
In the case of Good’s death, the FBI initially launched an inquiry, but officials in Minnesota have alleged the federal government is preventing local investigators from obtaining key evidence needed for their own review.
“The State is entitled to investigate, but the federal government here does seem to be trying to hamper the ability of the state to obtain critical evidence,” Mauleón added to Time.