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Authorities have arrested people in at least three states and accused them of impersonating law enforcement officers and agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, amid heightened fears over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Arrests have taken place in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina over the past few weeks, as ICE officials aggressively round up undocumented immigrants in raids that have ensnared U.S. citizens, setting off a climate of fear across the country.
On Jan. 26, a man in North Carolina was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a Raleigh motel after displaying a business card with a badge on it and threatening to deport the woman if she did not have sex with him, according to local NBC affiliate WRAL.
Carl Bennett Jr., 37, faces charges including impersonation of a law enforcement officer, kidnapping and second-degree forcible rape, according to online records. He was denied bail and has been appointed a public defender, local news channel WBTV reported, citing records.
On Jan. 31, a man was arrested near Charleston, South Carolina, and charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer and kidnapping after he allegedly confronted a Latino driver and said he was deporting him. The man, Sean Michael-Emmrich Johnson, 33, was identified by police as the aggressor in a viral video of the incident, NBC News reported.
Arrests have taken place in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina over the past few weeks.
The footage shows a white man, identified by police as Johnson, standing outside a driver’s-side window, where he says to the driver: “You from Mexico? You’re going back to Mexico.” He then reaches through the window and takes the keys out of the ignition while mocking the driver with a fake accent, before chastising him for speaking Spanish.
“Don’t be speaking that pig Latin in my f---ing country, bro. Don’t be speaking that pig Latin here,” he says. “This is America. We speak English in America.”
In a court hearing the next day, a public defender said Johnson was extremely sorry for his actions, local news channel WCIV reported, and the defendant was released on bond ahead of another hearing next month.
And last weekend in Philadelphia, a Temple University student, Aidan Steigelmann, was charged with conspiracy of impersonating a public servant after he and another man allegedly identified themselves as ICE agents while trying to enter a residence hall, where a third man joined them, a police spokesperson told NBC News. Wearing shirts with the words “ICE” and “police,” the three men later disrupted a cookie shop nearby, according to Temple and police.
The university said two of the men, including Steigelmann, are students who have since placed on interim suspension. The third person is a former student who is no longer affiliated with the school, Temple said. Police didn’t identify the men other than Steigelmann.
Steigelmann’s legal representative, the Defender Association of Philadelphia, declined to comment to NBC News.
On Wednesday, CNN reported that ICE released a statement saying that the agency “strongly condemns the impersonation of its officers or agents” and noting that criminal charges for doing so can be pursued at the federal, state and local levels.