While both agencies are part of DHS and conduct immigration enforcement, officials under oath described methods and tactics that differ.
Some of those tactics are resulting in untargeted roundups and tear gassed protestors during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Chicago. Both examples were carried out by CBP, which is a different agency than ICE.
When the ABC7 I-Team joined ICE exclusively in April of this year during one of their operations, Chicago ICE Field Director Sam Olson described the meticulous work they say goes into their arrests.
"Some cases take, you know, even a month, to kind of investigate, and again, to do just, you know, different techniques that we do to investigate, to figure out kind of where somebody might be, who's living with that kind of thing," he said.
Olson also described the planning behind one operation.
"They were anticipating the subject to get into a vehicle. So, it was a vehicle stop that we conducted," Olson said. "And so we, the officers on our special response team rehearsed that even beforehand, and it went down exactly, you know, as a planned."
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But a major contrast was drawn in federal court this week when the ICE Deputy Field Office Director said of Customs and Border Protection: "We're operating independently of each other. We're still doing targeted enforcement like we've always done; they do it a bit differently as everyone's seen."
In 2019, the I-Team traveled to Laredo, Texas to see Border Patrol tactics first hand as CBP patrolled on foot, on horseback, by air and in airboats along 171 miles of the Rio Grande River.
It is those untargeted patrol methods and mentality that traditionally separated CBP from ICE, DePaul University History Professor Tom Mockaitis said. He's concerned about the car chases and crash maneuvers happening in residential areas.
"I think cowboy mentality has seeped into the whole operation. So they are going to these places, and they are going through neighborhoods and so on, picking up people to some degree, at random, or, you know, certainly based on very, very dubious assumptions about how they look and sound," Mockaitis said.
Mockaitis adding with Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino leading the Operation Midway Blitz, CBP rules of engagement seem to have permeated ICE enforcement as well. He points to tear gas and pepper bullets which are regularly volleyed at protestors at the Broadview ICE processing facility.
"I mean, the level of force that is being used is is dangerous and unnecessary. I never would have imagined we would be talking about this in the United States. This is what I would expect to be seeing in dictatorships overseas, not my own country," Mockaitis said.
And while CBP leaders claim Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino is in full command of all "Operation Midway Blitz" assets, including ICE agents, court testimony from an ICE administrator contradicted that, saying no one person at the top is overseeing operations in Chicago.