By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s new homeland security secretary made sure cameras were rolling when she joined federal agents to arrest migrants in New York City, including a Venezuelan man wanted by Colorado police that Trump had made part of his anti-immigration campaign narrative.

Secretary Kristi Noem said the publicity created around the arrests was to show that the new administration was taking a different, tougher approach. Trump’s promises of mass deportations have stoked uncertainty and fear, but at least some of the arrests in New York were not a departure from how past administrations have pursued people charged with crimes, be they citizens or immigrants. 

The primary target of the New York operation was Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, a Venezuelan man named in a criminal arrest warrant for armed burglary from police in Aurora, Colorado. In interviews with journalists invited along, Noem referred to Zambrano with disparaging terms like “dirtbag.”

“We are completely changing the game when it comes to removing illegal alien criminals from the United States of America,” Noem wrote on a social media post, sharing dramatic photographs and videos of the well-staffed pre-dawn action in the Bronx.

Noem did not mention that two other Venezuelan men wanted in the same Aurora incident were arrested in the same Bronx neighborhood by the same federal agencies in November, before Joe Biden handed over the presidency to Trump on Jan. 20.

In November, journalists were not invited to film, and Colorado authorities are seeking custody of all three men to face justice in Aurora before any U.S. deportation efforts can begin.

Zambrano and the two other Venezuelans reportedly appeared in a video showing a group of heavily armed men in an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado, which Trump referred to in campaign speeches denigrating immigrants.

In his first term, which ran from 2017 to 2021, Trump deported fewer migrants than his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. While Biden’s deportations initially lagged behind Trump, he had more ICE removals in fiscal year 2024 than any Trump year.

Trump’s new government picked two of the country’s largest cities, Chicago and New York City, for highly publicized arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

Both cities are run by Democrats and are home to large immigrant communities. Both have so-called sanctuary laws that restrict local police and other municipal officers from helping the federal government enforce its civil immigration rules. 

Under Biden, ICE agents routinely arrested dozens of unauthorized migrants in both cities each week.

PUBLIC SPECTACLE

Immigrant advocacy groups say Trump’s government turned this week’s arrests into a highly public spectacle in order to amplify fear.

“The point of them is to scare people, to scare New Yorkers, whether they are non-citizens or not,” said Deborah Lee, who runs the immigration law unit of Legal Aid, the Manhattan public defenders group.

Migrant advocates say New York’s leaders, including Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, should do more to inform migrants of their rights and protections.

Hochul and Adams, both Democrats, have said that they believe ICE should arrest and deport whom they view as dangerous migrants, including some who have only been charged but not convicted of a crime. Adams has unsuccessfully tried to have lawmakers loosen the sanctuary restrictions, which the City Council has rejected saying it would erode New Yorkers’ due process rights.

Asked about this week’s arrests, Hochul told reporters that ICE agents had often arrested people in New York and that the state’s approach had always been clear.

“This is not a new dynamic,” she said. She said she wanted ICE to remove “serious offenders” from New York, but said the state “will not stand for children to be in fear in schools or people in churches cowering in basements out of fear.” 

Adams, who is facing a federal trial on corruption charges to which he has pleaded not guilty, has visited with Trump and said he will not publicly criticize the new president.

Adams said he directed the New York Police Department to work with DHS to enforce the Colorado arrest warrant for Zambrano, and he spoke with Noem before the arrests.

“As I have repeatedly said, we will not hesitate to partner with federal authorities to bring violent criminals to justice,” Adams’ statement said. “Our commitment to protecting our city’s law-abiding residents, both citizens and immigrants, remains unwavering.”

Zambrano was arraigned in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday on a federal charge of possessing a gun as a fugitive; the complaint made no mention of his citizenship.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; editing by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis)

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