The DSS employee says that it is common to log all activities as part of a DSS investigation, but until now, immigration enforcement was never a category that could be logged in the system.
“The system before was always [tracking] for passport fraud, visa fraud, or internal investigation for malfeasance, misfeasance, or for human trafficking,” they say. “But this Title 8, it is veering off from our authority, from our training.”
A former DSS agent, who worked in one of the State Department’s US offices and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy, says that DSS agents based in the US never had the authority to enforce immigration before the second Trump administration. If DSS did work with DHS, it would be because “there’s a nexus in our investigations,” the former agent says.
DSS agents, the source adds, would have no experience executing on administrative warrants, the kind of warrants that allow a person to be arrested for an immigration violation. “We know what to do for an arrest warrant, all the steps we take and all that,” they say. “We don’t do administrative warrants, we do criminal warrants.”
Last week, the New York Times reported that DSS officers were participating in the federal takeover of Washington, DC, including in at least one arrest. This also appears to have been an assignment outside their remit.
Under the Trump administration, the State Department has undergone a major overhaul. In May, the State Department notified the Congress that it intended to create an Office of Remigration as a “hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking.” The concept of remigration is a far-right plan that calls for immigrants and minorities to be kicked out of Western countries. Last month, some 1,350 State Department employees received termination notices, as the Trump administration has said it aims to cut 15 percent of the Department’s staff.
The DSS agent suspects that participating in and documenting efforts towards immigration enforcement could allow the agency to demonstrate its value in executing the President’s agenda, and allow it to protect some of its budget.
“This definitely only started after Trump took office,” they say.
The DSS employee, who has worked at other law enforcement agencies, says that “DSS agents are the least trained,” and worries that “agents who are ill trained are now enforcing the immigration law and are trampling on people’s civil rights, and they don’t probably even know about it.”
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