Two months after Border Patrol agents made a series of controversial arrests in the Inland Empire, federal officials are finalizing a policy to limit the agency's operations in interior areas.
Documents and interviews show that Department of Homeland Security officials want to concentrate Border Patrol agents at the borders and limit their inland activity to arresting illegal immigrants while they are traveling from the border and at transportation centers such as Los Angeles International Airport and highway checkpoints such as those in Temecula and San Clemente.
Authorities said the changes were under discussion before the June arrests, which stirred protests in the Latino community. About 450 suspected illegal immigrants in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties were arrested in less than a month by a specially trained team of 12 agents called the Mobile Patrol Group.
Agents arrested the immigrants in residential and commercial areas, saying they were acting on information about smuggling. The arrests ended when a Homeland Security official said the sweeps violated agency policy because they had not been approved in Washington.
Gloria Chavez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, said the proposal is being finalized in a memorandum that will clearly define the responsibilities of the Border Patrol and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Both agencies are part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Border Patrol will take the lead at the border and on all arrests of illegal immigrants in inland areas as they travel north; ICE agents will focus on enforcement away from border areas and take the lead on all immigration investigations.
Still to be defined, however, is where the border region ends and the inland area begins.
The proposed policy is already drawing fire from Border Patrol agents.
Joseph Dassaro -- president of the National Border Patrol Council, Local 1613, the union that represents 1,500 agents in San Diego -- said ICE was not equipped to enforce immigration law.
ICE agents already conduct investigations of immigrant smuggling rings, in addition to crimes such as terrorism, child pornography, copyright infringement, drug smuggling and customs violations.
"The mission of ICE agents is broad and diluted. They don't know whether they should be going after terrorists, child pornographers or smuggling rings," Dassaro said.
