The Dallas County adult probation department has begun allowing federal immigration agents to enter its offices to locate and arrest probationers suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
Director Arnold Patrick said his department has been providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with dates and times of its probationers’ appointments for years but confirmed he began allowing agents inside offices for the first time in September after they requested greater access.
Patrick said ICE agents “made a very good case” their entry to buildings would increase safety and prevent violent encounters, which are playing out in parking lots, neighborhoods and workplaces across the country amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
State law allows probation departments to share client information with federal officials, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees community supervision in the state. But giving ICE entry to secure offices where probationers report for appointments is an escalation that raises privacy and safety concerns for those present who are not subject to ICE’s warrants, law enforcement and legal experts say.
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Patrick confirmed the warrants ICE agents are presenting to enter buildings are administrative, meaning they originate from the agency and are not signed by a judge.
“It’s purely for safety reasons,” Patrick said. “I let them start coming into the building to make arrests as opposed to doing it in the parking lot. If they call me with a specific client and say, ‘We have a warrant for them’ then we will share our next office visit.”
Immigration agents have made about 30 arrests in probation offices since the arrangement began in September, Patrick said, creating a new level of access to a department that is part of the judiciary in Texas.
Rather than coordinating with probation directors, police practices expert Stan Kephart said immigration agents should take their warrants to a judge.
Otherwise, their access to buildings opens the possibility for agents to gather information on people in the offices who are not the focus of their warrant, Kephart said.
“You’re opening Pandora’s box,” Kephart said. The agent “is going to get a view of information that he’ll want to ask about too. What are you going to say? ‘I’m going to let you violate my sanctity a little bit but there’s a limit?’”
Patrick asserted his cooperation with ICE is not optional, citing a state law preventing local entities from making policy that “prohibits or materially limits the enforcement of immigration laws.”
But while probation departments can share client information with federal law enforcement, Gary Cohen, an Austin attorney who specializes in parole, said they have the discretion to deny ICE agents from entering secure probation areas not open to the public with warrants that are not signed by a judge.
“There’s a big difference between having a judicial warrant for a crime that someone has alleged to have committed and this looser kind of, ‘Oh come in and we’ll let you arrest people on the suspicion they may be illegally here,’” Cohen said.
When ICE agents showed up unannounced in May to a probation office in Brazoria County, director Gregory Dillon said he denied them entry because his safety procedures allow only local law enforcement to make arrests in his buildings.
Dillon said federal immigration agents can make arrests in public spaces like the office’s parking lot. But only local law enforcement have received training on-site in active shooter scenarios and have knowledge of exit points. Dillon said federal agents would need to be accompanied by local law enforcement to carry out the arrests inside his secure offices, and after he conveyed that requirement, he didn’t hear back from ICE agents.
“There’s a lot that can go wrong,” Dillon said. “We don’t need an incident occurring that jeopardizes my officers and people here reporting.”
In a statement to The Dallas Morning News, an ICE spokesperson said the agency’s arrests at the Dallas County probation office are for “known convicted criminal aliens” and are conducted through an administrative warrant with consent from the probation office.
“By taking criminal aliens into custody at the probation office, it minimizes the danger to the public, the alien and the officers due to the thorough security measures that are in place at the probation office that ensure illegal aliens are not carrying a weapon,” according to the statement.
In January then-acting ICE director Caleb Vitello released guidance saying federal immigration agents may conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses after coordinating with the office of the principal legal adviser. Probation offices are not courthouses but are part of the judiciary.
Dallas County presiding District Court Judge Audra Riley said the judiciary was not involved in Patrick’s decision to allow ICE access to probation offices. Although the judiciary hires probation department directors, it has no authority over administrative decisions they make, Riley said.
Dallas immigration attorney Kelli Gavin said courthouses used to be protected domains, in part because officials did not want defendants skipping hearings for fear of being detained on immigration matters unrelated to their criminal cases. She said it appears ICE is viewing probation offices as an extension of court settings, which opens privacy concerns for people not subject to their warrants.
“They are walking in looking for Joe Davis but then, ‘Oh these people don’t look like they have status, let’s talk to them, too,’ so that’s how other people get swept up,” Gavin said.
As the Trump administration has accelerated its immigration enforcement this year, jurisdictions across the country have entered agreements with ICE to deputize local law enforcement to carry out immigration arrests.
Dallas police Chief Daniel Comeaux recently turned down such a measure, a decision backed by City Council members in a joint committee meeting last week.
The Dallas County adult probation department’s cooperation with ICE is not a formal contract. Patrick said he chose to work with agents like he would with any other law enforcement agency.
“If I would do it for the FBI then I’m going to do it for ICE,” Patrick said. “If they say, ‘We have a warrant, we want to pick them up, when is their next report day,’ I feel compelled to tell them.”
Patrick said he had a lawyer in the district attorney’s office review the administrative warrants. District Attorney John Creuzot said no supervisor in his office was aware of any such discussion. Creuzot declined to comment on the probation department’s allowance of ICE agents to enter its buildings with administrative warrants to make arrests.
Patrick said when ICE agents requested access to his buildings in September, he set “ground rules,” like asking them not to wear masks that could scare clients from showing up to appointments.
There have been a few hiccups. Patrick said. After the arrangement launched, ICE agents began calling probation officers to seek information on individuals. Once he learned about the calls, Patrick said he instructed the agency to instead go through one point of contact, his administrative assistant.
Defense attorney Alison Grinter was alarmed to learn the director has given federal immigration agents permission to enter probation offices to make arrests. People serving probation in the community are required to report regularly to offices as a condition of their sentences, and she said clients cannot fulfill that obligation if the department is assisting immigration agents in arresting them.
“If we want people to be held accountable and do probation, then we need to not talk out of both sides of our mouth and feed them to ICE,” Grinter said. “It undermines everything probation should be standing for.”