That would be the high-water mark for fugitive operations. In 2006, under pressure from Congress, ICE instituted the annual arrest quotas, and, unsurprisingly, agents started arresting far fewer people with criminal records and far more of what they called “ordinary status violators.” Previously, if Mechkowski had been pursuing one person and encountered other undocumented immigrants along the way, he would ignore them, sticking to his original target. But because the arrest numbers were the key to unlocking more money for the agency, he and the other agents began making “collateral arrests.”
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