Rash of ICE impersonation follows Trump immigration crackdown, police say
Police in South Carolina received a call last week reporting that a person was driving a vehicle without a license. But they later learned it was actually the caller who had committed a crime, the Sullivan’s Island Police Department said.
That revelation came after a video, which Spanish news network Nuestro Estado shared on Facebook, showed a man telling the driver of a stopped truck that the driver was “going back to Mexico.” After reviewing the video and talking with witnesses, police said they obtained warrants for 33-year-old Sean Michael Johnson of Huger, South Carolina.
Johnson is among a handful of people who have been arrested on charges of impersonating law enforcement officers while citing immigration laws since President Donald Trump directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest more than 1,000 immigrants per day. The order has put immigrant communities across the United States on high alert; some people have even worried that ice cream trucks and Secret Service agents have been working for ICE.
Men in Philadelphia and North Carolina have also been arrested on charges of the impersonation of ICE officers in recent days, authorities said.
In the Facebook video from South Carolina, the suspect — whom police identified as Johnson — is seen taking the driver’s keys and saying the person “got caught.” Sullivan’s Island Police Chief Glenn Meadows said there were three Hispanic people in the truck whom the department is not publicly identifying.
Johnson was arrested Friday after turning himself in to police and was charged with multiple crimes, including petit larceny and kidnapping. He has since been released from a jail in North Charleston on a combined $231,587 bond, jail records show.
On Tuesday, Johnson hung up a phone call after a reporter from The Washington Post introduced himself, and he did not respond to a subsequent voicemail. Leaders of the Charleston County public defender’s office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday night. A public defender said in a virtual court appearance Saturday that Johnson was sorry, according to Charleston-based news channel WCIV.
Another impersonation took place in Philadelphia on Saturday, authorities said. Temple University’s public safety team responded to reports of two men impersonating ICE agents at a campus residence hall, officer Tanya Little, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department, said in an email to The Post.
The men wore black shirts that said “Police” on the front and “ICE” on the back, Little said. A third person recorded the impersonators, Temple said in a statement.
Police arrived at the residence hall after the men left, but about 10 minutes later, three men were reported to be impersonating ICE and police officers at a nearby Insomnia Cookies, Little said. While two suspects left in an SUV, another suspect, 22-year-old student Aidan Steigelmann, was arrested about 10 p.m., Little said.
Temple said that it suspended Steigelmann and that others who impersonate law enforcement agents could be expelled. Police are still searching for the other two suspects.
“This behavior and harassment of Temple community members will not be tolerated,” the university said in its statement.
Steigelmann was charged with impersonating a public servant. His attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr., said in an email to The Post that Steigelmann recorded video of two others and never identified himself as an ICE agent.
“It was never his intent to violate the law or cause harm to anyone,” Perri said.
ICE said it arrested and detained seven people who were in the country illegally at a Philadelphia car wash on Jan. 28. But ICE agents haven’t been on Temple’s campus, the university said in its statement.
In North Carolina, a 37-year-old man was arrested Jan. 26 and charged with multiple crimes, including impersonating law enforcement, kidnapping, second-degree forcible rape and assault on a female. He carried a fake business card with an image of a badge and threatened to deport a woman at a motel if she didn’t have sex with him, according to Charlotte-based news channel WBTV.
Court records show the man is represented by the Wake County public defender’s office, where attorneys did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday night.
That arrest came a few days after a man wearing a fake ICE uniform and driving a truck designed to look like an ICE vehicle parked in a Durham, North Carolina, shopping center’s parking lot, WBTV reported.