Why ICE is Allowed to Impersonate Law Enforcement

In the early hours of February 26, agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arrived at Columbia University student housing. According to the school, the immigration officials told campus security staff they were police officers searching for a missing 5-year-old child. But once inside the building, agents knocked on the dormitory door of Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva, a student from Azerbaijan. When her roommate opened the door, agents quickly detained Aghayeva.

Aghayeva, a social media influencer with more than 100,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram, posted an image of her legs in the backseat of a car at 6.30am. She said she was caught Immigration and Customs Enforcement and needed help.

The of Columbia policies is not to allow federal agents into non-public areas of campus without a judicial warrant. However, most immigration arrests are based on administrative warrants, which do not require a judge’s sign-off. So how did ICE end up on university property? In the hours after Aghayeva’s detention, as students and faculty rallied against DHS, it became clear: ICE lied. And, as it turns out, it’s (mostly) legal.

According to reporting from the Columbia Spectator, the immigration officials who arrested Aghayeva did not identify themselves as federal agents to campus security guards.

This was not exactly unusual. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that ICE has long been able to lie to and even impersonate other law enforcement agencies. But with more funding, arrest quotasand less supervision than ever before, they worry that ICE could overstep its own legal safeguards — and mislead the public even more.

At a protest that formed outside the university in the hours after Aghayeva’s arrest, hundreds of people gathered to express their frustration with the university and call for Aghayeva’s release.

“If the university would really train every officer to know what to do, we could all be safer,” said Susan Witte, a professor of social work at Columbia’s School of Social Work who attended the protest. She told WIRED that some students and faculty have pushed the school to ensure all staff are trained on how to deal with ICE and law enforcement.

But that kind of training doesn’t necessarily matter if ICE misrepresents itself. Sebastian Javendpoor, a graduate student who sits on the Arts and Sciences Student Council and attended the protest, says that while the school has told its campus security to only allow federal agents on campus with warrants, “it doesn’t deter acts like this where DHS misleads the officer on duty. I would argue that they are allowed to let DHS agents know in a public order that security officials were not able to mislead them.” to gain access.”

Aghayeva’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. According to recent posts on her Instagram, she is back at school and also back to posting content.

Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, you said that immigration officials identified themselves as police and that misleading university staff was a “breach of protocol.” DHS disagrees.

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement,” DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told WIRED. “As for Elmina Aghayeva, the Homeland Security Investigators identified themselves verbally and visibly wore badges around their necks.”

Lies—or “ruses”—like this have long been common. In 1993, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor of ICE, lured immigrants to an INS district office by telling them they were eligible for a one-time shot at amnesty for being in the country illegally and that they would be given work authorization. When an immigrant would show up to collect their employment authorization cards, they would be arrested and deported.