Under President Trump,
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Force, or ICE,
has been going in hard
on detaining and deporting immigrants,
but they haven't always been working alone.
Roy Wood Jr. reports from the front lines.
WOOD: Two words that will scare you: illegal immigrants.
TRUMP: We have gang members, predators, rapists, killers.
Illegal immigrants are burglars, are thieves
who are there to harm your security
and steal your prosperity.
WOOD: Trump has been cracking down
on these illegal invaders
with a voluntary program called 287(G).
It invites local police to cooperate
with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency,
better known on the streets as ICE.
To investigate, I went to Bensalem, PA,
to meet with 287(g) O.G. Fred Harran.
This guy has a lot of shit on his desk.
287(g) helps put people in jail
or, if ICE decides to deport,
you know, ships them out of here.
WOOD: The program gives police departments access
to the ICE database.
They're basically putting ICE on speed dial
when they want to deport undocumented criminals.
So, it saves me sometimes hours of police time
waiting around for ICE to get back to us.
God forbid it's late at night and you got to text ICE.
You got to be like, "Hey, girl.
What you doing, ICE, baby?"
But that's not how we, you know, contact ICE.
And then you see that little gray bubble pop up,
and you think they're gonna reply,
then the bubble go away.
Junky desk dude had me convinced.
Local police make a great deportation force
for undocumented criminals.
There's only one problem.
We border a sanctuary city.
WOOD: Yes, Bensalem is surrounded by sanctuary cities.
These are cities that refuse
to check anyone's immigration status.
To find out why, I went to nearby Jersey City
to talk to another guy with a lot of shit on his desk,
James Shea.
Why not just cooperate with 287(g)?
Our goal when we assure people
that we will not check their immigration status
is a safer city for everybody.
Officers need witnesses.
Officers need victims to cooperate.
WOOD: This guy Shea is nuts.
He's saying that if his officers turn over
the undocumented arrestees to ICE,
they'll lose the trust of the community,
which makes their job harder.
But aren't these cities just Disneyland for criminals?
Harran seems to think so.
A criminal that's undocumented,
they would much prefer to be in a sanctuary city
because they can commit crime,
and they get treated like anybody else.
They get cut off, loose back on the street,
and they can go commit their crime again.
WOOD: To see the swarming hive
of undocumented criminals for myself,
I embedded with Officer Alberto Vasquez,
Jersey City PD.
If I'm not mistaken,
98% of all crime in this city
is committed by immigrants, correct?
I can't say that's correct at all.
We'd have to see those stats, and we can communicate on...
The stat is 73% of all immigrants commit crimes.
So now it's 73%?
No, that's what I said the first time.
-98%. -No, it's 52%.
52% of all immigrants
commit all the crimes.
And one percent is Russians.
All right.
So, are we supposed to go out or something?
-Let's go. -So, I get a gun, right?
-No gun. -Okay, that's cool. I get a vest?
No, but I'll give you one of my T-shirts
-that I have downstairs. -Does it say "police" on it?
-No. -Well, then I don't want it.
Doing police work was a lifelong dream.
So, we started with the basics: racial profiling.
We're looking for people who look undocumented.
What do they look like?
-It's not really any type of particular look. -Right there.
-There. That-that... -We don't know.
-What about that right there? -We don't know.
We don't know that, right? We, uh...
So then you got to pull them over.
-We got to talk to them. -For what?
To find out if they should be in the country or not.
-What do you mean, for what? -We don't have to do that.
There's no reason to do that.
What about them two right... They look...
Since Vasquez was unwilling
to check anyone's immigration status,
it fell to me to do the real police work.
Sir, are you a citizen?
Am I a citizen?
Can I see some ID?
-No, I don't have any ID on me. -Yeah.
Tell the radio we got a 42-7 in progress.
A 42-7? What's a 42-7 again? I forget.
You know, it's a 42-7.
-You got to remind me. -Call it in.
Vasquez wasted the day making friends
and being nice to citizens, not deporting people.
There really isn't too many times
where I'm gonna ask you your status.
I'm just gonna ask you how I can help you, what's going on,
and if hopefully you can help us out.
All right, so, then, let's role-play.
I'm an immigrant,
and then you approach me in Spanish.
(speaking Spanish)
No comprende.
I was starting to comprende the issue.
But if some police didn't feel a need
to crack down on illegals,
were the undocumented even the ones
committing all the crimes?
I do know we see them more frequently
as victims than as criminals.
WOOD: Recent studies show
that crime rates for illegal immigrants
are lower than the national average.
Is Harran aware of this?
We've had 741 people that we've arrested
that we've turned over to ICE since 2009.
That's about five percent of the total arrests.
That means 95% of the people committing crimes
are here legally.
We don't have an illegal immigrant crime problem.
We have a citizen crime problem.
Despite the data, more and more police departments
are partnering with ICE.
But how do people in the immigrant community
feel about this?
I asked a couple of kids that Vasquez coaches
on a high school baseball team,
and they think they know the real reason
for the programs.
Feel like it's, like, immigrants are targeted kind of.
So you think a law like 287(g),
which allows police to detain immigrants,
is basically...
-Racist. A racist law. -Yeah, racist.
-Y'all some deep-ass kids, man. -Yeah, man.
WOOD: These kids had a point.
Keep the ICE out of "pol-ICE."
I mean, police.
But there was still one thing these kids didn't know.
Tell y'all something about your coach.
-He don't know how to speak Spanish. -Oh! -(laughs)
VASQUEZ: Now, you know I can speak Spanish.
Introduce yourself in Spanish, coach.
(speaking Spanish)
-Hey! -Ah.
I need to see some ID, bro.
(all laugh)
(applause)
Roy Wood Jr., everybody.