BY FREDA MIKLIN
GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
John Fabbricatore was named Denver Field Office Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) / Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) on May 26, 2020. The Denver Field Office encompasses all of Colorado and Wyoming.
Fabbricatore retired in 2022 after having spent 30 years in government, including as supervisor of the detention and deportation office for the Denver Field Office and as an instructor at the ICE ERO Academy , where he taught in the Physical Techniques Division and ICE ERO Fugitive Operations Academy. He also served as the supervisory detention and deportation officer for the Denver Field Office.
Passionate about the topic of immigration, Fabbricatore is a frequent speaker on the subject. On July 13, he testified in Washington D. C. at the House Immigration Subcommittee’s Hearing titled, “Examine Sanctuary Cities That Shield Illegal Aliens,” where he addressed, “the erosion of immigration enforcement and lack of respect for the rule of law,” asserting that, “There are hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens at large in the United States,” asking, “Why aren’t they a priority?”
He is especially concerned with the impact of sanctuary jurisdictions, telling the Congressional Subcommittee, “As an ICE field office director, I witnessed the deterioration of relationships with local law enforcement agencies because of sanctuary policies.”
In a talk to the Arapahoe County Republican Breakfast Club at Maggiano’s DTC on August 1, he cited an incident that occurred seven years ago when ICE agents under his direction “got onto a task force with Denver Police (DPD)” to tackle the heroin problem. In 2016, as part of that task force, ICE set up a three-month operation with DPD to identify and detain drug traffickers.
“In two weeks, we arrested 76 Hondurans selling heroin on the Cherry Creek Trail. When the Denver City Council found out about it and the mayor found out about it, they called over to DPD and said, ‘I heard ICE is on the Cherry Creek Trail. I want them off, now. I was in (DPD) District three, talking to a sergeant about how successful we were being in stopping (the sale of) heroin on the Cherry Creek Trail, when he got a phone call and said to me, ‘I’ve got to kick you out. You guys are off the task force.’ When I asked why, he said, ‘Because they don’t like the optics of ICE being down here working with us. There’s nothing I can do about it.’” As a result, Fabbricatore told the group, “That task force was ended that day.”
Turning to fentanyl, Fabbricatore said, “We have over 100,000 people (nationwide) dying of fentanyl overdoses every year. Who’s supplying this fentanyl? The Mexican cartels. Who’s supplying the cartels with the precursors to make the fentanyl? The Chinese. Why?…….The Chinese want to destabilize the United States because they want their dollar in control. The Chinese want to be the economic power and the military superpower in the world.”
On Mexico, he asserted that the cartels “are making billions of dollars off of human smuggling and drug trafficking,” but more off smuggling than drug trafficking, “because they get their payment up front.”
A review of the ICE Annual Reports for the past five years shows that the number of people crossing the border from Mexico, regardless of the countries from which they originate, has gone up steadily every year since 2017, as evidenced by the number of non-detained individuals each year:
2017
2,404,323
2018
2,641,589
2019
3,274,244
2020
3,200,000 (estimated
from graph)
2021
3,685,856
2022
4,759,560
At the same time, staffing levels at ICE-ERO have not come close to keeping up. Staffing of U.S. Border Patrol agents nationwide was about 22,000 back in 2011, dropping down to under 20,000 in 2017, where it has largely remained through 2022.
Also noted in the 2022 Annual Report is that, “While the surge in administrative arrests of other immigration violators — largely focused on recent border crossers — resulted in significant workload increases for ERO, deportation officers continued to conduct interior arrests of those with criminal histories, including extremely serious criminal offenses. In FY 2022, ERO arrested 46,396 noncitizens with criminal histories.”
While Fabbricatore reserved much of his criticism for the current president, he was quick to note that the last time the United States Congress passed any meaningful immigration legislation was in 1996, during the administration of former President Bill Clinton.
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