Journalism of Courage
In recent years, Border Patrol agents had been primarily focused on the southern border, scouring communities along the Rio Grande and other regions for migrants in the country illegally.
Things have changed.
These days, the US-Mexico border is much quieter. So the Trump administration has tapped the agency to be a key part of its broader crackdown on migrants, deploying agents to chase down and arrest immigrants in cities farther away from the border, such as Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles.
The agency is the law enforcement arm of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. It is charged with protecting the country’s borders from smugglers, traffickers and illegal crossers.
Its agents are immigration officers, like officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which is also part of the Department of Homeland Security. While ICE has traditionally operated in the country, Border Patrol’s focus is the 6,000 miles of international border and a zone of about 100 miles inland.
“While the Border Patrol has changed dramatically since its inception in 1924, its primary mission remains unchanged: to detect and prevent the illegal entry of individuals into the United States,” the agency says on its website. “Together with other law enforcement officers, the Border Patrol helps maintain borders that work — facilitating the flow of legal immigration and goods while preventing the illegal trafficking of people and contraband.”
Border Patrol officers still have authority anywhere in the country, and the Trump administration has increasingly relied on them to carry out its mass deportation agenda.
“Their ability to operate nationwide ensures Border Patrol can enforce immigration laws, combat smuggling and address national security threats anywhere in the United States,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. “And that immigration enforcement is not limited to border regions when individuals who evade detection at the border can still be apprehended.”
Border Patrol agents can arrest people for immigration violations, typically for crossing the border illegally. They can also make arrests for crimes committed in front of them, said Matthew Hudak, a former senior Border Patrol official.
Agents have more expansive powers within 100 miles of the border, which can be a maritime or land border, including a port of entry.
“Within the 100-mile border zone, CBP has expanded authority for stops, searches and checkpoints,” said Kara Lynum, the former acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration.
There are more than 100 checkpoints at both the southern and northern borders, where agents can assess someone’s immigration status, according to a 2022 Government Accountability Office report.
Like ICE officers, Border Patrol officers are permitted to arrest people without a warrant, Lynum said. The agents must, however, “have reason to believe someone is unlawfully present and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained,” she said.
Yes. Border Patrol agents have made arrests in areas away from the border in the past, including toward the end of the Biden administration, when Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who has been leading this year’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles, arrested dozens of people in California’s Central Valley.
But a large presence of Border Patrol agents conducting immigration enforcement in a major U.S. city for a period of several weeks is not the type of work that the agency has typically done.
“It’s not common, but agents work city patrol operations as part of their normal work, including larger cities like El Paso, San Diego, Tucson,” Hudak said, adding that the presence of agents in cities can cause tension.
“It’s important that enforcement doesn’t stop at the border, but it clearly creates critics and animosity toward the agents. I think that, long term, it will have consequences, despite the legality of what they are doing,” he said.
Officials in Illinois have criticized the agency’s tactics in Chicago, including Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat who has said the efforts were part of an “unconstitutional invasion of Illinois by the federal government.”
Border Patrol officials, however, defended their work in the city.
“The goal is the same as it’s been, whether we’re here or on the border: It’s to find illegal aliens,” said David Kim, a chief assistant patrol agent with Border Patrol. “We’re using threat-based matrixes to find those that are bigger threats first. But no one’s off the table if we encounter them.”
