() President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to investigate who may be funding escalating attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as federal data shows assaults on immigration officers have surged nearly 700% compared to last year.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the increase in attacks on federal agents as violence against ICE and Border Patrol officers intensified over the Fourth of July weekend, disrupting enforcement operations and allowing potentially dangerous individuals to remain in the country.
Court records reveal that 10 protesters wearing body armor and carrying automatic rifles fired dozens of rounds at a Texas ICE facility after launching fireworks, wounding one officer. In Portland, Oregon, four people were arrested for attacking officers, spraying graffiti and throwing bricks at an ICE office.
The uptick in violence is hampering ICE operations designed to apprehend individuals who pose national security risks, including Iranian nationals flagged as special interest cases who remain in the U.S. instead of being deported.
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“This does take a lot of time, and a lot of effort goes into this and it might be a couple of days cause one day you might see the target and the next day you may not so it takes a little bit of time to find them,” said David Kim, assistant chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector.
Law enforcement sources say agents are under pressure to meet daily arrest quotas of 3,000 people, leading to large-scale enforcement operations where individuals not originally targeted are being swept up, partly because their safety and operations are being compromised by protesters.
Recent incidents include four individuals in Van Nuys who used improvised devices to disable federal vehicles during immigration enforcement operations.
All four were arrested and face felony charges. In another incident, protesters threw rocks and broke windows of an agent’s vehicle during operations in Los Angeles’ Flower District.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced the city will join a class action lawsuit to halt the raids and canceled a scheduled meeting with Border Patrol leadership. Bass previously said she wouldn’t make deals with ICE other than getting them to leave the city.
