2.15.26 new ice office location - columbus, ohio

New ICE office located in Westerville, Ohio.

ICE Field Office: 675 Brookesedge Blvd, Westerville, OH

New OLPA Office: 774 Park Meadow Rd. Westerville, OH

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

The surge in ICE hiring aims in particular to expand two branches of the agency, two officials said: the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

OPLA is effectively the legal arm of ICE, with more than 2,000 lawyers and support staff who help prosecute immigration removal cases, as well as provide legal advice to the agency and defend it in court, according to ICE’s website. ERO handles “all aspects” of immigration enforcement, the website says, “including the identification, arrest, detention and removal of aliens who are subject to removal or are unlawfully present in the U.S.”

Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA law professor and an expert on immigration and citizenship law, said “the expansion is a natural next step after Congress expanded ICE funding and the Supreme Court granted ICE authority to detain people based on race and language, broadening the population of people who may find themselves under investigation…”

“It suggests that we’re looking at a much broader, pervasive enforcement apparatus that’s going to be part of everyday contact between individuals and law enforcement,” said Motomura, the co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. “And in this regard, it’s significant that U.S. citizens have already been caught up in the dragnet before this expansion.”

Motomura compared the rapid expansion of ICE’s powers and capacity to other law enforcement initiatives in U.S. history, the expansion of federal law enforcement powers after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist investigations during the Cold War and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, among others.

“When these things have happened, courts have stepped in, lawyers bring lawsuits. You get some pushback, but the pushback never seems to push things back to where they were,” Motomura said.

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