The villains in the two narratives are different. On immigration, officers are being prevented from doing their jobs by dictates from above (agency management and political appointees); in criminal justice, they’re being prevented by agitators from the outside, waiting to jump on (as FBI Director James Comey once put it) the next “viral video.”

But in both cases, the Trump administration’s solution is to give law enforcement agents themselves more control over how they do their jobs.

Officer-led policymaking will change law enforcement — in ways that won’t be immediately visible

That control might start growing the minute Trump is inaugurated — or it might have started already, quietly, as the Obama administration packed up its bags. (When the people at the bottom of the organization are making the decisions, the understaffing of top levels of the executive branch isn’t a problem; if anything, it’s a virtue.) But it won’t be immediately visible to anyone but the people involved in the interaction themselves.

Border Patrol agents will have wider authority to apprehend and detain immigrants within the 100-mile zone that constitutes the US “border.” They’ll probably be allowed again to tag along with local law enforcement officers, as “translators,” and ask about the immigration status of those for whom they’re translating; they’ll probably be allowed to detain more people who are trying to seek asylum or might qualify for it.

ICE agents, for their part, look to be freed of the Obama-era memos setting strict “priorities” for which immigrants ought to be detained and deported, and which ones ought to be released. They’ll be free to go into schools, courts, and hospitals to apprehend immigrants, if that’s what they feel they need to do.

They might recover the ability to deport immigrants who currently benefit from deferred action; they’ll almost certainly be able to detain and deport parents of US citizens without many questions from Washington. They’ll likely regain a new supply of immigrants from local law enforcement agencies.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/20/14241026/police-trump-border-patrol