No More Immigration Raids at “Protected Areas” & “Sensitive Locations”

In an October 12, 2021 memo issued to the Citizenship & Immigration Services (CIS) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agencies, Mayorkas announced that the DHS would now end all mass immigration-enforcement operations at worksites in the United States. Asserting that such operations should target employers of illegal migrants, rather than the migrants themselves, Mayorkas wrote: “The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country’s unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers. These highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a tool of retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations.”

In an October 27, 2021 memo, Mayorkas ordered immigration officers to likewise refrain from arresting any illegal aliens at additional “protected areas” and “sensitive locations” like food banks, homeless shelters, churches, hospitals, schools, playgrounds, childcare centers, school bus stops, and places where disaster or emergency relief is provided. “When we conduct an enforcement action—whether it is an arrest, search, service of a subpoena, or other action—we need to consider many factors, including the location in which we are conducting the action and its impact on other people and broader societal interests,” Mayorkas told immigration officers in the memo. “For example, if we take an action at an emergency shelter, it is possible that noncitizens, including children, will be hesitant to visit the shelter and receive needed food and water, urgent medical attention, or other humanitarian care.”

In response to Mayorkas’ memo, Federation for American Immigration Reform president Dan Stein said in a statement: “The [ICE] agency still exists, but it has been stripped of all of its functions with regard to the enforcement of immigration laws. Nearly all illegal aliens are already off-limits to enforcement due to a Sep. 30 memo, and as a result of Mayorkas’ ‘expanded and non-exhaustive list of protected areas,’ where ICE agents are [not] permitted to do their work, the secretary has essentially nullified an entire body of constitutionally enacted laws.”