EXCLUSIVE: LA ICE director reveals officers followed home, harassed as police fail to help in sanctuary city

EXCLUSIVE: From agents being followed home and harassed to dealing with riots and local police refusing to assist, ICE Los Angeles Field Office Director Thomas Giles gave Fox News Digital an inside look at the daily risks of conducting operations in one of America’s largest sanctuary cities.

Fox News Digital accompanied Giles and a team of ICE officers on an immigration enforcement operation in the Los Angeles area early Thursday morning. In an interview from inside his vehicle during the operation, Giles emphasized that while “it’s not going to shut us down and stop us,” California’s sanctuary policies put both his agents and the community at risk.

“The sanctuary policies definitely impact our operations in terms of it’d be a lot easier for us to have that transfer of custody in a secure environment,” he explained. “So, what it does for us is it sends our officers out into the community, putting our officers at risk and other community members at risk to go out and try to apprehend this individual.”

Fox News Digital witnessed ICE arrest six illegal immigrants Thursday morning, including one who had been convicted of assault with a baseball bat and another who had been convicted of illegally re-entering the U.S. multiple times.

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Giles explained that because of ongoing litigation in California, ICE officers are not allowed to knock on a target’s door or even set foot on the area surrounding the property. This complicates enforcement by forcing officers to apprehend targets in public spaces or through potentially dangerous vehicle stops.

He said that “before we had all these sanctuary policies … we were picking up hundreds of people a day at the local jails and bringing them in and processing them.” Now, local law enforcement “can’t even work with us,” which he said “is definitely a big, huge public safety threat.”

As an example, Giles pointed to one of the operation’s targets, 20-year-old Honduran national Julio Alberto Aroca-Rodriguez, whom local police had arrested the week before for assault with a deadly weapon using a baseball bat. Aroca-Rodriguez entered the U.S. at an unknown date and location and has been subject to a removal order since 2019. Local authorities declined to honor ICE’s request to hold Aroca-Rodriguez and released him.

When ICE officers encountered Aroca-Rodriguez on Thursday, they also detained four other “collaterals” identified as illegal immigrants. After making the arrests, the officers quickly relocated because a crowd of anti-ICE agitators had begun to form.

Giles described the treatment of ICE law enforcement officers by many California politicians, the media and members of the public as “degrading to the work that the men and women of ICE do.”

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“My officers have been followed home and been harassed, harassed on social media, harassed just personally, and they get in your face and everything else,” he said.

He also criticized anti-ICE agitators who wear masks while simultaneously “complaining about us wearing masks but they look the same as we do as well.”

Despite this, Giles praised his officers as Americans who “love this country” and “want to support the Constitution.”

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“We’re out doing our job; we are sworn law enforcement officers. We’re out trying to keep the community safe just like other law enforcement officers,” he said. “I just think there’s a lot of rhetoric out there that a lot of people don’t know exactly what we do and we’re trying to portray that out to the public.”

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Fox News Digital witnessed ICE process Aroca-Rodriguez and was told he would remain in custody pending removal to Honduras. Five other illegal immigrants were also processed for removal proceedings during the operation.