FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. – As Daniel Bustamante-Cespedez prepared for his workday on a chilly morning, he was unaware that a group of immigration agents was monitoring him closely.

Having served time for a DUI, he had been observed for several days. Despite evidence of his illegal status due to an expired tourist visa, he was released by local authorities.

Agents had tracked his schedule meticulously. They knew he left his apartment every morning between 5:50 a.m. and 6 a.m. and that a silver Toyota Corolla would arrive to pick him up. As he exited his apartment, he would grab a tool belt from his own car before getting into the passenger seat.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to specifically target immigrants with criminal histories as part of a broad “mass deportation” initiative.

However, the actual number of undocumented immigrants with criminal records is in the hundreds of thousands, not millions. These individuals are some of the most difficult for ICE to locate and apprehend.

As the agency responsible for deporting immigrants from within the country, ICE agents often require extensive resources, sometimes taking days or weeks of surveillance, to arrest someone who is both undocumented and has a criminal record.

With around 6,000 deportation officers, ICE is dealing with a staggering 7.6 million noncitizens, of which over 660,000 have criminal records or pending charges, as reported by ICE.

A majority of these individuals are not in federal detention: Congress has allocated funds for only 41,500 immigration detention beds nationwide, and nearly all these beds were occupied by the end of the fiscal year.

“Our responsibility is to ensure that those who are violating immigration laws are brought to justice and removed from the country,” stated Liana Castano, field office director for Virginia and Washington, D.C.

ICE conducts two types of arrests: “at-large” operations in communities and “custodial” arrests within jails. According to ICE, making an arrest in the community requires eight times the personnel compared to arresting someone in a jail setting. It’s estimated that each community-based arrest costs taxpayers about $6,653.

“It requires significant time and resources for our officers to determine a pattern of behavior for these individuals,” she noted.

ICE and ‘sanctuary’ communities

Like numerous detention facilities in various “sanctuary” areas across the country, the Fairfax County jail does not detain individuals without a court order after they have completed their sentence, even if they lack legal status. Bustamante-Cespedez was released on December 18 after serving 30 days for his DUI.

Fairfax County officials could not provide a comment. However, in a statement from July, the Sheriff’s Office said their policy strives to balance the rights of inmates with public safety.

Legal rulings have affirmed that the federal government cannot mandate local authorities to participate in immigration enforcement. The county has stated it will detain any individual if there is a judicial warrant authorizing the action.

“ICE gets notified every time an undocumented immigrant comes into our custody,” the statement highlighted. “Yet, they often do not take action to secure a warrant that would allow for further detention.”

“The best outcome,” she explained, “is that our local partners notify us when they have these individuals in custody, allowing us to take them from jail rather than conducting street arrests.”

ICE views DUI offenses seriously due to the potential harm that drinking and driving can cause.

This is why on the morning of January 15, unbeknownst to Bustamante-Cespedez, ICE agents were waiting at 5:30 a.m. in the parking lot, communicating with each other and referring to him as “Tango.”

“Looks like Tango is coming out,” an agent said over the radio.

“Hold on. He’s gathering his tools,” one agent reported. “He just closed the trunk. The passenger door opened. The passenger door is now shut. Execute,” he ordered, signaling for two ICE vehicles to move in and box in the Corolla. Agents quickly surrounded the vehicle.

Focusing on immigration law enforcement

For the last ten years, following the inception of the agency after 9/11, ICE has had difficulty maintaining its mandate of enforcing immigration laws within the U.S. as its workload and demands have significantly increased.

While the Border Patrol focuses on securing the northern and southern borders, ICE’s role is to apprehend and deport immigrants residing throughout the U.S. However, ongoing crises at the U.S.-Mexico border have consistently led administrations to reassign ICE agents and resources away from domestic enforcement, a pattern noted in every annual report from ICE over the last decade.

Under the Obama administration in 2012, the interior saw the highest number of deportations, according to Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Council. “Trump couldn’t come close to those numbers because of the large influx of people at the border.”

That year, 55% of ICE removals occurred at the border. During the Trump administration’s peak year for deportations in 2019, 67% were from the border. Last year, under Biden, this percentage surged to 82%.

However, illegal immigration has significantly decreased in the past year for a variety of reasons, placing the Trump administration in a position to address a U.S.-Mexico border with unlawful crossings at a five-year low.

This could provide ICE the opportunity to refocus on enforcement efforts across the nation for the first time in more than a decade.

Surveillance of a suspect

Two hours after Bustamante-Cespedez’s arrest, ICE agents were tracking a second target in another area of Fairfax County, Nicolas Hernandez-Lopez.

Hernandez-Lopez, 46, had been convicted of sexual assault in Virginia in 2019. After serving a year in prison, he was deported to El Salvador by ICE in 2023, only to return illegally, as per ICE records.

The sky turned shades of pink and yellow as dawn broke, with commuters and school buses moving through intersections. Agents planned to follow Hernandez-Lopez to his job since attempting to apprehend him at his residence, located on a busy road, would be too risky.

At around 7:55 a.m., agents began to track Hernandez-Lopez as he drove away in a dented white Chevrolet pickup heading for his job at an auto body shop.

An ICE agent alerted the team about the presence of school buses in the vicinity. Two other agents were stationed at a 7-11 convenience store, ready to follow.

Just moments before Hernandez-Lopez arrived at work, agents closed in on his truck, effectively blocking his escape route.

Upcoming executive actions

Trump, who is scheduled to be inaugurated on Monday, has indicated plans to sign executive orders aimed at enhancing ICE’s powers to arrest and detain immigrants. He also intends to encourage collaboration between local jurisdictions and ICE.

As Congress prepares to implement the Laken Riley Act, the future of immigration enforcement is set to undergo significant changes to greatly widen the types of immigrants that ICE is obligated to pursue for deportation.

If it receives approval in a final vote on Wednesday, the legislation would mandate ICE to detain undocumented immigrants who have been charged with or found guilty of nonviolent offenses, including shoplifting.

Sarah Mehta, a senior policy advisor at the ACLU in New York, stated that this law would lead to a “significant expansion of mandatory detention,” which “removes the authority that immigration officers and judges have to assess who poses a risk to the community or might flee.”

During a hearing, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who is the leading Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, cautioned that this legislation would necessitate at least a threefold increase in detention facilities and 80 deportation flights each week, effectively doubling the current capacity for removal flights.

“This will require ICE to nearly double its workforce,” she added.

To achieve the “mass deportation” figures that Trump has frequently mentioned—potentially in the millions—experts believe that ICE would need to go even further, focusing on individuals whose only offense is violating U.S. immigration laws.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, noted that the country’s processes for enforcement and deportation are not designed for mass deportations.

“I remember when Trump was last in office,” he remarked, “and there were attempts to ramp up deportations. They struggled because the federal government depends on state and local law enforcement to report undocumented immigrants who have been detained or convicted, and many local agencies simply do not comply with that.”

According to a poll conducted by the National Immigration Forum and Bullfinch Group, Jennie Murray, the Forum’s CEO, indicated that moderate and conservative Americans prefer that immigration enforcement focus on violent offenders rather than those lacking legal status.

The poll revealed that 67% of respondents prioritized targeting violent criminals over individuals without legal status, according to Murray.

Facing Detention, Deportation, or Release

At the ICE regional office, Bustamante-Cespedez and the individual who was supposed to drive him to work were inside a temporary detention area. The driver was seen pacing back and forth while agents monitored them through a glass partition and video screens. In a booking area, an agent was using a digital fingerprint scanner on Hernandez-Lopez.

That morning, three teams of ICE agents—totaling 18 members—were involved in the apprehension of Bustamante-Cespedez and one other noncitizen with a prior criminal record.

Castano, the director of the field office, explained that ICE prioritizes the most serious cases in managing their substantial workload, allocating their limited resources accordingly.

“It’s challenging,” she mentioned. “The pressure is definitely present.”

Since Bustamante-Cespedez had not received a final order of removal, he would first need to appear before an immigration judge, who operates under the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, not ICE.

The judge would determine if he should be held in detention, deported, or allowed the opportunity to apply for legal status in the U.S. The driver, also from Bolivia, had work authorization in the U.S. and was under scrutiny regarding his immigration status.

Hernandez-Lopez, however, had already received a final order of removal and would be detained and deported to El Salvador, with Castano indicating that this would likely happen within weeks.

Sarah Wire contributed to this report.