Trump wants to deport immigrants with criminal records. They're hard to track down.

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. – When he stepped into the frigid, pre-dawn morning headed to work, Daniel Bustamante-Cespedez had no idea a dozen immigration agents were watching him.

He had been under surveillance for days, after serving time for a DUI conviction. County authorities released him despite evidence he was in the country illegally, having overstayed his tourist visa.

Agents knew his routine. That he exited his apartment complex every morning between 5:50 a.m. and 6 a.m. That a driver came in a silver Toyota Corolla to pick him up. That before getting in the car, the 35-year-old Bolivian national grabbed a tool belt from his own parked vehicle before sliding into the passenger seat.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to target immigrants with criminal records as he launches a "mass deportation" to remove millions of people from the country.

In reality, the number of immigrants here illegally who have criminal records beyond immigration violations run into the hundreds of thousands – not millions. They are among the toughest people for ICE to find and arrest.

As the only agency authorized to deport immigrants from the nation's interior, it can take numerous ICE agents, days or weeks of surveillance and considerable risk to arrest one person with an immigration violation and a criminal record.

The agency has roughly 6,000 deportation agents. They're staring down a caseload of 7.6 million noncitizens – including more than 660,000 with criminal records or pending charges, according to ICE.

The vast majority aren't in federal custody: Congress pays for 41,500 immigration detention beds nationwide, and nearly all were filled at fiscal year's end.

"Our job is to ensure that the individuals that are in this country circumventing the laws of the immigration system are brought to justice and are removed," said Liana Castano, field office director for Virginia and Washington, D.C.

ICE makes two kinds of arrests: "at-large" in the community and "custodial" inside jails. ICE said it takes eight times the personnel to make an arrest in the community versus at a jail. The American Immigration Council estimates each at-large arrest costs taxpayers $6,653.

"It takes a lot of hours and manpower for our officers to establish a pattern for these individuals," she said.

ICE vesus 'sanctuary' communities

Like more than 550 detention centers in so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions nationwide, the Fairfax County jail won't hold people without a court order after the completion of their sentence, even those who may not have legal status to remain in the country. The county released Bustamante-Cespedez on Dec. 18 after he served 30 days for the DUI.

Fairfax County officials couldn't be reached for comment. However, in a July statement, the Sheriff's Office said its policy balances the constitutional rights of inmates with those of the public.

Court cases have upheld the notion that the federal government cannot compel local jurisdictions to take part in immigration enforcement. The county said it will hold any individual where there is a judicial warrant authorizing their detention.

"ICE is notified every time an undocumented immigrant is taken into our custody," the statement said. "Yet, time and again, they make no effort to secure a warrant that would give judicial authority to detain."

"The ideal situation," she said, "is that our local partners, once they have these individuals in custody, that they contact us ... so we can take custody of the individual from a jail versus having our guys out in the streets."

ICE considers DUI a serious offense, given the risk that drunk-driving can result in fatalities.

That's why, on the morning of Jan. 15, unbeknownst to Bustamante-Cespedez, ICE agents were waiting for him at 5:30 a.m. in the parking lot, communicating by radio, referring to their target as "Tango."

"Hey guys, it looks like Tango is coming out," an agent said over a crackling frequency.

"Stand by. He's grabbing his tools," the agent narrated. "He just closed the trunk. Passenger door opens. Passenger door is closed. Execute," he said, giving the order for two ICE vehicles to roar in and pin the Corolla. Agents jumped out and surrounded the car.

Prioritizing immigration enforcement

For the past decade – dating back to the agency's creation after 9/11 – ICE has struggled to fulfill its mission of enforcing immigration laws in the country's interior, as the caseload and the demands on the agency have ballooned.

While Border Patrol is tasked with patrolling the northern and southern border regions, ICE focuses on arresting and deporting immigrants living across the United States. But repeated crises at the U.S.-Mexico border have led one administration after another to shift ICE agents and resources from interior enforcement to the border, an issue documented in every ICE annual report going back at least a decade.

The year 2012, under the Obama administration, saw the highest number of deportations from the interior, said Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Council. "Trump wasn’t able to get close to that because of the large number of people presenting at the border."

That year, 55% of ICE removals were migrants apprehended at the border. In 2019 – the Trump administration's highest year for deportations – 67% of removals were at the border. Last year, the percentage shot to 82% under Biden.

But illegal immigration has fallen dramatically this past year, for various reasons, and the Trump administration stands to inherit a U.S.-Mexico border in which unlawful crossings are at a five-year low.

This may enable ICE to focus more sharply on the rest of the country for the first time in more than a decade.

Tracking a suspect on open roads

Two hours after Bustamante-Cespedez's arrest, ICE agents were circling in another corner of Fairfax County, waiting for their second target, Nicolas Hernandez-Lopez.

The 46-year-old had been convicted of sexual assault in Virginia in 2019, served a year's prison time and was deported to El Salvador by ICE in 2023.

He had returned illegally, ICE said.

Dawn turned the sky pink and yellow, as morning commuters and school buses trundled through intersections. Agents planned to follow Hernandez-Lopez to his job; his home was on a main road where it would be too dangerous to attempt an arrest, Castano said.

Agents in two vehicles followed Hernandez-Lopez as he drove away in a dented white Chevrolet pick-up around 7:55 a.m., headed for his job at an autobody shop.

An ICE agent cautioned over the radio there were school buses on the road. Two more agents waited in a 7-11 convenience store parking lot, ready to pull out behind him.

Seconds before Hernandez-Lopez reached his workplace, agents pinned his truck between their vehicles.

Executive orders, changes to come

Trump, who will be inaugurated Monday, has indicated he'll sign executive orders to expand ICE's authority to arrest and detain immigrants. And he'll encourage local jurisdictions to work with ICE.

At the same time, with its pending Laken Riley Act, Congress is poised to massively expand the categories of immigrants ICE must target for deportation.

Should it pass a final vote Wednesday, the act would require ICE to detain immigrants here illegally who have been charged with, or convicted of, nonviolent crimes such as shoplifting.

The legislation would result in a "massive expansion of mandatory detention," said Sarah Mehta, senior policy counsel at the ACLU in New York, and it "overrides the discretion that individual immigration officers and judges have about who is a risk to the community or a flight risk."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, warned during a hearing that the legislation would require at least a threefold increase in detention beds and 80 deportation flights a week, double the current removal flight capacity.

"That all ends up to ICE needing nearly double its staff," she said.

To reach the "mass deportation" numbers Trump has often talked about – in the millions – experts say ICE would have to go further, targeting those whose only criminal record is a violation of U.S. immigration law.

Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the country's enforcement and removal process isn't set up to deport people en masse.

"I remember the last time that Trump was in office," he said, "and they tried to increase deportations. They didn't do a great job, because the federal government relies upon state and local law enforcement to turn over illegal immigrants who have been arrested or convicted of crimes, and a lot of state and local agencies just don't do that."

Jennie Murray, chief executive of the National Immigration Forum, said Americans who identify as moderates and conservatives want immigration enforcement to stay focused on removing violent criminals, according to a poll conducted by the Forum and Bullfinch Group.

In the poll, 67% said violent criminals should be the priority, and not those without a legal status, Murray said.

Detained, deported or released

Back at the ICE field office, Bustamante-Cespedez and the man who intended to drive him to work were inside a temporary holding cell. The driver was pacing. Agents watched them through glass and on a wall of monitors. Along a row of booking stations, an agent pressed Hernandez-Lopez's hands onto a digital fingerprint machine.

That morning it took three ICE teams – 18 agents in total – to apprehend them and one other noncitizen with a criminal record.

Castano, the field office director, said ICE manages its massive caseload by "prioritizing the most egregious cases and putting our limited resources on those cases."

"It's difficult," she said. "The pressure is definitely there."

Bustamante-Cespedez didn't have a final order of removal yet, so he would first face an immigration judge – under the purview of the Department of Justice's Executive Office of Immigration Review, and not ICE.

A judge would determine whether he should be detained or deported or granted a chance to apply to stay in the U.S. The driver who picked him up that morning was also from Bolivia, but he had permission to work in the U.S. Agents were investigating his status.

Hernandez-Lopez had a final order of removal and would be detained and deported to El Salvador, Castano said, probably within weeks.

Sarah Wire contributed to this report.

Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump wants to deport immigrant 'criminals.' Can they be tracked down?