Inside ICE’s Puerto Rico deportation operation

No one knows exactly how many immigrants are living without legal status in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Rebecca González-Ramos, ICE’s top investigator on the island, estimates it’s about 20,000, and since January it’s been her job to track down and deport every last one of them.

“Our mandate,” she said, “is 100 percent. So everybody that’s in the United States, and in this case in Puerto Rico, without an immigration status, needs to be removed or deported.”

González is the Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. HSI is Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s intelligence office – one of dozens of HSI offices nationwide. She is the first woman to lead her office, responsible for investigating customs fraud, drug and weapons smuggling, and human trafficking. But since she assumed the role a few days after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, her agents’ number one priority has become finding immigrants to deport.

They’ve adopted more aggressive strategies than in past administrations. They’re expanding surprise raids at hotels and construction sites, knocking on the doors of people with deportation orders, and questioning others on the street. She says they’ve asked Puerto Rico’s department of motor vehicles to hand over the names and addresses of the roughly 6,000 people who got licenses under an immigrant-friendly law that extended driving privileges to people without legal status. They take informant tips from everyday citizens calling in to report on their neighbors.

González-Ramos’s operations on the island offer a glimpse into how ICE offices nationwide are ramping up their surveillance, investigation and enforcement tactics to deliver on President Trump’s mass deportation promises.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.