DHS chief: SWAT-like teams wouldn’t be needed if sanctuary cities would help ICE

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said on Tuesday that SWAT-like teams would not be needed to back up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts in so-called sanctuary cities if local officials there would help with immigration enforcement.

“What we found in these sanctuary jurisdictions is that local law enforcement does not work with the department,” Wolf told Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“So what used to take one or two officers going into a jail setting and picking up an individual that’s on a final order of removal, we now have to go into communities with many, many officers.”

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers will support ICE  as “additional resources” for “law enforcement and immigration duties” in sanctuary cities, according to the acting secretary.

He clarified that the CBP officers will work independently from police, so local officers may not know where department officers plan to enforce immigration law. 

“Again, in these sanctuary cities, they provide no resources to help us do our mission,” he said. “Should they decide to honor detainers and help ICE, we would not have to call in these additional resources.”

Sanctuary cities have declared themselves safe havens for undocumented immigrants, meaning they will not be turned over to federal authorities. 

President Trump and administration officials condemned these cities, with Trump pledging in his State of the Union address to combat them. 

Updated at 10:52 a.m.