"We're Just Doing Our Jobs," says WNYC Caller Claiming to Be an Immigration Agent

As public defenders protest the state's court system for allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their buildings, a woman claiming to be a New York City ICE agent took the rare step of speaking out.

During a segment on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show Friday, the caller described herself as "a staunch Democrat and a staunch liberal." She said she was uncomfortable giving her name, and sounded like she was close to tears when she started speaking. She said she disagreed with President Trump's crackdown on immigrants charged with, but not convicted of, crimes.

"The ICE agents you talk about are people like me," she said. "I can't give up a 19-year federal career that I worked hard for because of this idiot in office right now. I can't do that to my family, to my kids, as much as I would like to."

"Please understand that ICE agents, us — the lowest guys on the totem pole — are not always happy about having to do this," she continued. "This is awful for us, too."

The woman said she didn't know of any formal quotas but acknowledged feeling more pressure to arrest people who were not considered priorities during the later years of the Obama administration. Immigrants without criminal records were often left alone then, but ICE now also arrests those charged with but not yet convicted of crimes.

"We didn't even look at immigrants who were just illegal," the self-described agent told WNYC, of the years before Trump took office. "It wasn't even important."

When host Brian Lehrer asked the caller what type of enforcement made her proud of her job, she said "interdiction with child exploitation."

"We do a huge amount in arresting child predators, child pornographers, anything in that whole area of child exploitation," she explained. "I personally arrested people who I have done cases on who I know are child molesters. Anything that goes in across the border... So all that kind of illegal contraband, all that child porn that's something we get involved in. Human trafficking is a huge thing ICE does. We have victims who we've saved."

The radio segment focused largely on recent protests by public defenders against the presence of ICE agents in city courts. Timothy Rountree, the attorney in charge of of Queens Legal Aid, defended the protests as necessary and denied that clients were abandoned during the demonstrations, because he said there were dozens of other lawyers in his office who could cover the cases. But the Office of Court Administration (OCA) has called the actions disruptive and took the unprecedented step during Tuesday's protest of reassigning cases normally handled by Queens Legal Aid to private lawyers who represent the poor. 

According to OCA, ICE agents have entered city courthouses 26 times since last year and made six arrests. They are required to notify judges of their presence, though Rountree said judges don't always tell the lawyers when agents are in the building. Public defenders and some politicians have called on the courts to require ICE to show proof of a warrant signed by a judge in order to enter courthouses. But the state's chief judge has said courts are public buildings.