(Headline USA) President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security repealed a Biden-era rule this week that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from making arrests in “sensitive locations,” such as schools and churches.
The rule, implemented by former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2021, expanded the list of “protected areas” where ICE could not detain or arrest illegal aliens to include schools, universities, healthcare facilities, places of worship, “food banks, disaster or emergency response and relief centers,” and all “places where children gather.”
According to ICE agents, these areas became ideal locations where criminal illegal aliens would hide.
Mayorkas claimed at the time the order was necessary to uphold “justice” and protect “people’s access to essential services or engagement in essential activities.”
“In our pursuit of justice, including in the execution of our enforcement responsibilities, we impact people’s lives and advance our country’s well-being in the most fundamental ways. As a result, when conducting an enforcement action, ICE and CBP agents and officers must first examine and consider the impact of where actions might possibly take place, their effect on people, and broader societal interests,” Mayorkas said in a statement.
A memo issued Monday by Trump’s DHS said ICE agents should prioritize the enforcement of federal immigration law and common sense instead.
“Going forward, law enforcement officers should continue to use that discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense,” the new memo said. “It is not necessary, however, for the head of the agency to create bright line rules regarding where our immigration laws are permitted to be enforced.”
According to border czar Tom Homan, Trump’s ICE has already begun targeting criminal illegal aliens as part of the president’s mass deportation plan, starting in Democratic-controlled sanctuary cities.
“Let me be clear. There’s not only public safety threats that will be arrested, because in sanctuary cities, we’re not allowed to get that public safety threat in the jail, which means we got to go to the neighborhood and find him,” Homan said on Tuesday. “And when we find him, he may be with others. And unlike the last administration, we’re not going to tell ICE officers not to arrest an illegal alien.”
