--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I'm Ryan Knutson.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Today, we're exploring a story about immigration enforcement and the role of state and local law enforcement in that process. Our colleague Arian Campo-Flores has been on plenty of police ride-alongs before, but this one, in Lake Worth, Florida, was different.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: I honestly didn't know what to expect. I've never done a ride-along of this nature before.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Arian rode along with Master Sergeant Tony Kingery of the Florida Highway Patrol.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: You know, those state troopers with the wide-brimmed hats and khaki uniforms. The officers who might ticket you for speeding.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Except, on this day in July, Sergeant Kingery was keeping an eye out for something else. Undocumented immigrants.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So at one point, we were driving through this commercial district. And then he noticed a white van.
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: [over radio] So there's a van over here. He ain't going to go now.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: A white van missing a bumper. A clear violation of traffic law. It doesn't have a front bumper, which is illegal in the state of Florida.
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: And so Sergeant Kingery then pulled another U-turn to get behind him.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And that's when he also noticed that the van was missing a rear taillight.
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: And he flashed his siren.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And so he decided to pull it over.
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: Kingery walked up to the driver and told him about the missing bumper and broken taillight.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The back light's broken. He also asked the driver for his license.
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: And that's when the traffic stop became more than just a traffic stop.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The guy behind the wheel didn't speak English.
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: And instead of producing a license, the driver handed over a Guatemalan consular ID.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And so at that point, Sergeant Kingery asks him, Sir, are you a U.S. citizen?
--:-- Sergeant Tony Kingery: Are you a U.S. citizen?
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: That question isn't something you'd necessarily expect during a routine traffic stop.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But that's changing. The driver and his passenger both ended up in handcuffs on suspicion they were in the country illegally.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: This quick escalation from broken bumper to immigration arrest was made possible by a federal program that grants immigration enforcement powers to state and local police.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And Florida is leading the way.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: It's Monday, September 22nd.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Coming up on the show, when state troopers enforce immigration law.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So how does a routine traffic stop on a Florida highway end with people in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement?
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The answer lies in a federal program called 287G.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: 287G. The 287G program. A controversial program called 287G.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: 287G basically authorizes state and local officers to perform some immigration enforcement duties under ICE supervision.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The idea was to partner with ICE to expand the agency's reach.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So 287G got its name from this provision of federal law a law that was passed in the late 1990s.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I signed a presidential directive to the heads of all executive departments That allowed for federal immigration agencies to deputize state and local law enforcement to carry out certain immigration-related functions.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Instructing them to very quickly expand and strengthen our program to reduce illegal immigration.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And that program, 287G, has gone through a lot of iterations depending on which administration has been in power.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So, for instance, under the George W. Bush administration, that program expanded.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Under the Obama administration, it shrank.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Under the first Trump administration, it grew again.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: When Trump was elected a second time, he revived a controversial form of 287G called the task force model.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: That's the model that lets police act almost like ICE agents while they're going about their usual law enforcement duties.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So things like checking immigration status during a traffic stop, detaining people they think are here illegally, and handing them over for processing.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Reviving this part of 287G would go towards achieving one of Trump's key campaign promises.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Immediately upon taking the oath of office, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The Trump administration, as part of its broader illegal immigration crackdown, has made clear that it would like to have the support of state and local law enforcement to act as what they term force multipliers in immigration enforcement operations.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: What's the goal here? Like when you talk about force multipliers, what does that mean?
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The goal here is basically to enhance the capabilities of ICE.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Really, the thrust here is just to have more personnel available, more resources available, more vehicles out on the roads, more traffic stops, and more encounters with potential undocumented immigrants.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so far, no state has embraced Trump's illegal immigration crackdown as forcefully as Florida.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The Sunshine State this year allocated nearly $300 million into immigration enforcement work.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It also built an immigration detention center in the Everglades, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, a fortress-like compound rising from the wetlands.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Now, the state is going all in on 287G.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Florida is the leader, it's the leading state in striking 287G agreements with ICE.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Across America, there are about 500 task force agreements under 287G.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And of those agreements? More than half of those are Florida agencies, whether they be at the state level or local police.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And the Florida Highway Patrol specifically, of the roughly 1,800 troopers that the Florida Highway Patrol has, nearly all of them have undergone the training and have achieved the designation of designated immigration officers, DIOs.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But while Florida is leaning in, civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrant rights are raising alarms.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: These are our neighbors, not criminals, murderers or rapists.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: 287G has no place here.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: We are the people.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The criticism is that it is a recipe for racial profiling, that it encourages officers to use the pretext of a traffic stop to actually further this deportation agenda.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: When they're asking me for my papers and they're not asking you for your papers, then they're making that determination on their own.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Critics like the ACLU also argue that 287G pulls local police away from their usual work, stuff like traffic safety, crash scenes and neighborhood patrols.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: In this new system, how does oversight work?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told us and the head of the Miami field office that this is all done under their supervision.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Because ICE and Border Patrol have undergone significant training to actually carry out immigration enforcement duties.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You're not going to be able to learn all the complexities of how to do that with one week of training.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Meanwhile, the Trump administration sees the program as an important tool for expanding its immigration crackdown.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I wanted to see how it was being used.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And so I was just really curious to be able to see firsthand how this was being put into practice.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You know what did this look like?
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Also the back light out is here.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: We'll go ahead and let the traffic stop on it and check it out.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: After the break, the rest of Arian's ride along with Florida Highway Patrol.
--:-- [Theme music returns]
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--:-- Ryan Knutson: Today's day we're going to be doing some saturation patrols here in Palm Beach County.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The morning of my ride-along, I sat in on a pre-operation briefing.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That day's deployment included 10 troopers, several supervisors, helicopter support, two federal officers from ICE, and a Border Patrol agent.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Sergeant Tony Kingery instructed the troopers.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Look for those vehicles that could possibly have a large amount of illegals in that vehicle. Stop those cars.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So he wanted them to focus on this one particular geographic area that straddles both sides of Interstate 95.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It was an area he said was believed to be saturated, in his words, with undocumented immigrants.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: We have a pretty high area that's saturated with possible illegals in those areas.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He said that the troopers should go out and make what he called good traffic stops.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Stop those cars for good violations, traffic violations.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And if that then led to the potential apprehension of an undocumented immigrant. So be it.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So be it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That was the sort of point of the operation.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And so that was before the ride along.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: When you did go on the streets with Sergeant Kingery, you know, what did you see?
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Yeah, I got sort of a sampling of what stops they made.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So for instance, one stop was of a pickup truck that was towing a trailer.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The trailer was missing its license plate, which it's required to have.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so the trooper pulled the vehicle over.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: An officer stopped the driver and questioned him.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He was suspected of being in the country illegally and detained.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: ICE agents were also on hand with laptops connected to federal databases.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Those ICE officers can then pull up, get the person's name, run them through their databases, and then get information as to whether they maybe missed a court hearing or they were previously deported and re-entered.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: In less than an hour, state troopers had stopped several vehicles and detained several people they suspected of being in the country illegally.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It went on like this throughout the morning.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The officers pulled folks over for traffic violations, including one passenger who wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And detained suspected undocumented immigrants.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Several of the detainees were dressed in fluorescent green shirts bearing the name of a lawn service company.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It was later on in the day that Sergeant Kingery encountered that white van, the one we told you about at the start of the episode, with the missing bumper and broken taillight.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So the driver and the passenger were both Guatemalan immigrants.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: In the driver's case, he was 28 years old.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: He had had a conviction for driving under the influence.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He had suspended driving privileges.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And he had also been given a notice to appear in court that had been issued by Border Patrol.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: How did the driver react to this encounter with Sergeant Kingery?
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: As more troopers arrived and the ICE officers arrived and the situation became clearly more serious for him he repeatedly said in Spanish I have a baby son at home Please let me call home to talk to my baby son
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He at one point crouched down and just started retching.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: His face got really red and he just looked like a ball of nerves very distraught.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The passenger in the van said he was 18 years old and attending school.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: He pleaded with officers not to initiate deportation proceedings against him and deny that he was in the country illegally.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Their protests didn't work.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The officers led both men to another vehicle.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: They removed their handcuffs and put them in zip ties that were provided by the ICE agents, and they loaded them onto the back of this pickup to head toward this Border Patrol station where they would then be processed.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The two detainees never made it there.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Fifteen minutes after the pickup truck left, Sergeant Kingery's radio crackled with an update.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The two men had escaped, apparently when the trooper's vehicle stopped at an interstate exit.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The child locks were not engaged on the back doors.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And so they bolted out of the car, took off running, went through like a car dealership and on through this area where there was warehouses and there was a parking lot full of school buses and other facilities.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And that then initiates essentially a manhunt for these two individuals who had escaped.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The Florida Highway Patrol helicopter was circling overhead, but after significantly more than an hour, they just called it and they moved on.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: By the end of the day, Florida Highway Patrol had detained 23 people, not including the two who escaped.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The executive director of the highway patrol summed up how the operation went.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: In his words, he said, you win some, you lose some.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: Arian later learned that the driver, the guy who had begged to call his baby son, was eventually arrested.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The younger passenger hasn't been caught.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: These state troopers already had a job before they were deputized in this way.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: They write speeding tickets, they attend crash scenes, things like that.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: How sustainable is it for local or state law enforcement to also take on the duties of federal immigration agents?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It is time consuming and it does consume resources.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: But the DeSantis administration in Florida has made clear that this is a priority for the state, for his administration, to support the Trump administration's illegal immigration crackdown.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so as a policy decision, you know, if that is a priority, then you're going to dedicate resources to it.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And while immigrant advocacy groups remain concerned, supporters see that arrests and detentions are up.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And by those measures, 287G is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: The Florida Highway Patrol has been the lead agency involved in more than 3,500 apprehensions of people suspected of being in the country illegally.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That's a big number, 3,500.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: So I think the evidence is there that if this is a policy you're in agreement with, 287G can help boost apprehensions of suspected undocumented immigrants.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The Trump administration has said it would like to have at least 20,000 state and local law enforcement trained to carry out some of these immigration enforcement duties.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: In other words, this experiment could just be the beginning.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And it could reshape the work of local and state law enforcement across the country.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: It's potentially a glimpse of where things could be headed.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I mean, the director of the Florida Highway Patrol told me that he envisions the work that the Florida Highway Patrol is doing as a model for what other state and local agencies can do around the country.
--:-- Arian Campo-Flores: And there are hundreds of other task force agreements that have been struck by law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: If there are jurisdictions and there are states that decide that this is a policy that they want to pursue, they can look at Florida as a potential model of how to go about doing that.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That's all for today, Monday, September 22nd.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Additional reporting in this episode from Scott Calvert and Elizabeth Pindell.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
