JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The state of North Carolina borders no other countries. Its biggest city, Charlotte, is about 200 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. But agents who led the federal immigration enforcement campaign that started last weekend in Charlotte were from the U.S. Border Patrol. Yesterday, the mayor and sheriff said the Border Patrol had left town. Hours later, the Department of Homeland Security said the operation in Charlotte isn't ending anytime soon. So why is the Border Patrol the face of the Trump administration's aggressive mass deportation initiative in Charlotte and in other major cities, as opposed to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Atlantic staff writer Nick Miroff has investigated this and joins us now. Hi there.
NICK MIROFF: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Nick, to be clear, Border Patrol and ICE, they both conduct federal law enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security. Help us understand what the difference is.
MIROFF: Yeah, I mean, they're both part of the Department of Homeland Security, but until now, have had a pretty clear division of labor, and that is that the Border Patrol is responsible for protecting the country's borders and looking for threats that may be trying to enter, whether that be people crossing illegally or narcotics or something like that, and ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is really responsible for immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States, away from the border areas. And typically, that has consisted of ensuring compliance with things like immigration court orders and, you know, orders to depart the country for those who have exhausted their, you know, legal appeals to remain in the United States.
SUMMERS: And you've written that Border Patrol and ICE, they operate differently. Can you explain how? Like, are the tactics different? Is one more aggressive than the other?
MIROFF: Yeah, I mean, it's really a very different mentality. Your typical Border Patrol agent is doing, you know, what is referred to as area control. And that means they're looking for anyone coming into their area, and they're seeing them as a potential suspect who they need to go and question. And, you know, their biggest responsibility is making sure that nobody sneaks past them. You know, they're worried about someone who could be doing harm, someone with a - you know, who's a serious criminal or a drug smuggler.
Whereas the way that ICE has typically conducted immigration enforcement in U.S. cities and communities is what they call targeted enforcement. That means they do some research. They know who they're looking for. You know, they have a picture of that person. They know their address. And they plan their operation and then they go out and execute it. The problem with that approach is that it doesn't deliver the extraordinary numbers that the White House and the president are demanding, and that is, you know, a million deportations a year.
SUMMERS: Right.
MIROFF: And because ICE wasn't getting those numbers, President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security have been bringing the Border Patrol in to try to help.
SUMMERS: And how does what we see the Border Patrol doing here, how does that differ from their typical duties? This is not normally what Border Patrol does.
MIROFF: Yeah, no administration has ever used the Border Patrol in this way, deploying them on this scale in U.S. cities and communities. They say that they've got more than 2,000 agents right now in 25 cities. And really, the face of the president's mass deportation campaign has ceased to be, you know, border tsar Tom Homan, who's a former ICE official, and it's really now become Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino. He's the one that has been leading the most aggressive operations, first Los Angeles, then Chicago and now most recently in Charlotte and elsewhere in North Carolina. And, you know, that approach is clearly what the White House wants. And it's been defined by a more confrontational, more aggressive and, really, less discriminate form of carrying out, you know, these operations.
SUMMERS: Tell us a little bit more about Gregory Bovino. As you note, he's been the figurehead in a number of these operations, including there in Charlotte. What's his role?
MIROFF: Well, Greg Bovino is a career Border Patrol official. He was the top official in the El Centro sector of California's Imperial Valley. So he really distinguished himself within the Border Patrol for his teams producing very kind of edgy social media videos that, you know, really were designed both, I think, to boost recruiting, but also to promote the image of the Border Patrol as this kind of paramilitary organization that was, you know, going out and fighting the Mexican cartels and that sort of thing. And he really got the White House's attention with his knack for this kind of social media approach, but also his willingness to go out and really hit the streets and kind of, you know, operate in as aggressive a way as possible.
SUMMERS: You wrote, and I'm quoting here, "Trump has turned Bovino's agents into a personal army as well as a political tool." And that stuck out to me because President Trump has mused - we've heard him muse about sending active-duty military into U.S. cities. And if he did that, he would likely face a whole lot of legal challenges. Do you think that using Border Patrol in this way is sort of a loophole?
MIROFF: You know, I think the Border Patrol for the president and the White House is kind of the next best thing to a military deployment. Trump has mused openly about using, you know, active-duty troops and the Marines, and he's been trying to send National Guard troops into U.S. cities. He's faced various kind of legal setbacks to doing that. And their forces, especially their tactical forces that Bovino is traveling with, you know, they wear camouflage. They have big guns. They wear ballistic helmets and armor. And really, they look like, you know, soldiers.
And probably the best example of that is in Chicago, when they flew a Blackhawk helicopter over the South Side of Chicago and repelled down onto an apartment building in the middle of the night to arrest a few dozen immigrants, including primarily Venezuelan families. But more than six weeks later, they have not produced any evidence of narcotics or weapons that supposedly made these folks so dangerous.
SUMMERS: I think a big question on a lot of people's minds is just simply, is it legal to deploy the Border Patrol in this manner?
MIROFF: It is in that the Border Patrol has the kind of broad authority to enforce immigration laws inside the United States wherever they need to go. There were lawsuits early on, when Bovino's teams first went to Los Angeles and were - you know, advocates developed a record of them conducting racial profiling on the streets of Los Angeles and brought a lawsuit. And they successfully appealed it all the way to the Supreme Court, and that's when we got the opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh really kind of affirming their ability to use the ethnic appearance of someone, their - you know, whether they speak Spanish in terms of reaching a reasonable suspicion that a person might be in the country illegally. And that's been kind of a green light for them to fan out across the United States and conduct the operations we see in this kind of way.
SUMMERS: We've reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on your story. But I'm curious, what did they tell you when you reached out to them to confirm the details of your reporting for the Atlantic?
MIROFF: They really wanted to insist that the Department of Homeland Security is one team and to really kind of play down some of the emerging tensions over this Border Patrol deployment and the Border Patrol's kind of prominence in superseding ICE.
SUMMERS: It's been widely reported that the Border Patrol is preparing for an operation in New Orleans next. So has this sort of become their MO, going from one major city to another major city to continue to conduct these operations?
MIROFF: It certainly appears that way, and that's the way that Bovino describes it. It's almost become a kind of, you know, traveling roadshow. What we saw in Charlotte were, you know, reports of school children remaining home and, you know, churches empty and, you know, stores empty, that type of thing. It really has a broad chilling effect, but I think it's worth pointing out that that is partly what they're going for. I mean, they - this administration is leaning heavily into the idea that if it's tough enough and if it can intimidate enough people, that they will self-deport, and that's how they will manage to reach the kind of ambitious, you know, deportation goals that Trump has set.
SUMMERS: Nick Miroff of the Atlantic, thank you so much.
MIROFF: Thank you, Juana. Anytime.
SUMMERS: And just a note - we have not received a response from the Department of Homeland Security about Nick Miroff's reporting. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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