When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Utah violinist Donggin “John” Shin in Colorado Springs in mid-August, they didn’t act alone.
An agent from Homeland Security Investigations was also present. The law enforcement agency, under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, targets global crime like human trafficking and weapons smuggling.
Members of ICE’s Fugitive Operations, whose stated mission is to focus on individuals who threaten national security or public safety, also contributed investigative work to the case, according to arrest documents. Shin was processed at the Colorado Springs office of HSI.
Shin’s attorney, Adam Crayk, said he was shocked to see the other agents’ involvement.
“For HSI and Fugitive Operations to be involved, you're like, ‘Uh-oh, we didn't get the whole story here. John may be involved in something that nobody knows about,’” Crayk said. “And nope, not the case.”
Court records show Shin pleaded guilty in 2020 to a misdemeanor impaired driving charge, a lesser offense than a DUI. He also had multiple traffic citations and one traffic court case.
HSI’s involvement in Shin’s case and beyond represents a big change in how immigration arrests are made, Crayk said.
“There may have been some chance encounters out there over the past 25 years, but to be specifically tasked to picking up low, low-level offenders and non-offenders — that doesn't — that's not been a thing till now.”
The Trump administration directed roughly 2,000 agents from other federal agencies to support immigration enforcement in 25 cities across the U.S. in May, The New York Times reported.
In Utah, South Jordan immigration attorney Christopher Vizcardo said he has observed FBI agents help ICE make arrests. In June, he received a call from a client who was pulled over in Salt Lake County. When he arrived, he said he saw a handful of unmarked SUVs and eight to 10 agents wearing FBI-branded bulletproof vests. They worked alongside one ICE officer, he recalled.
“My understanding is that they confused my client with someone else that they were looking for,” he said.
The client is in the country without a valid immigration status, which is a civil, not criminal, offense, and has no criminal record, he said.
Vizcardo and Crayk also have clients who were arrested with support from Drug Enforcement Administration agents. It’s not unusual for DEA and ICE to collaborate in a drug trafficking case where officers suspect someone without legal status is involved, Crayk said, but solely focusing on immigration is new.
“Where DEA is just investigating undocumented status, no, that has not been a thing.”
Employees of at least five federal law enforcement agencies have been reassigned to help ICE, according to the nonprofit American Immigration Council. HSI, it noted, is going after more low-level immigration offenders.
This collaboration increases ICE’s capacity to make arrests in the state, Vizcardo said, “because you only need one ICE officer, and then the rest is support staff.”
Immigration arrests in Utah have increased more than threefold under the second Trump administration. From September 2023 until before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Utah saw three ICE arrests per day. For the first six months of the second Trump administration, that jumped to an average of 10 arrests per day, according to a KUER analysis of government data provided by ICE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request to the Deportation Data Project.
Since Trump took over, immigrants with pending criminal charges, or no criminal charges, make up a larger portion of ICE arrests in Utah: 43% under Trump versus 29% in the preceding 16 months. Nationwide, 70% of people in ICE custody have no criminal conviction, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Tasking other federal agencies with immigration enforcement removes them from their daily tasks of fighting high-level offenses. Crayk called it “nonsensical.”
“Focusing on the John Shins of the world takes the focus off the actual criminals, people that are really engaged currently in real, real dangerous and nefarious activity, like drug trafficking, human trafficking,” he said.
Crayk wonders how the government justifies redirecting other agencies to target people like Shin and house them in detention.
“All they would have to do is show up at John's door and say, ‘Hey, we would like you to show up for immigration court on this day,’ and guys like John will be like, ‘OK, yeah, I'll be there.’”
Crayk is sometimes called on to represent defendants when a federal agency accuses a group of people of a federal crime like drug trafficking. But he hasn’t been called for that type of case in months, he said.
“So the implication is, is people that are supposed to be doing things that really actually protect our community, they're not engaged in their normal work.”
ICE did not answer KUER’s questions about which agencies support them in Utah and under which circumstances.
In a statement, a spokesperson said, “In the same way other federal law enforcement agencies are currently supporting the nation’s whole-of-government immigration enforcement efforts, ICE is focusing all its law enforcement personnel on mitigating public safety threats and preserving the integrity of our immigration laws” (Editor’s note: emphasis in original statement).
Shin, the violinist, was granted a $25,000 bond at his Sept. 2 court hearing. Crayk said they must wait a day before paying the bond in case the government files an appeal to keep Shin in ICE custody.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
