(CNN)Brent Oxley, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer in Little Rock, Arkansas, was happy in his work, which he says "gave me the feeling that I was helping protect my country." A big part of his job: Look through rosters from local jails for people who might be deportable, ask for them to be held for ICE to pick up, then go get them.
But last May, ICE fired Oxley, for a variety of charges that included forging his supervisor's signature on arrest warrants for undocumented immigrants. Federal immigration law requires each warrant to be signed by an authorized supervisor. By signing them himself, an ICE administrator wrote to Oxley, he had exposed ICE to the possibility of "numerous unlawful detention lawsuits" over illegal arrests, had they not reissued the warrants.
Oxley challenged his termination, convinced he had not been alone in skipping the warrant-review process, which could be inconvenient when supervisors weren't in the office and the 48-hour time limit to release people was nearing its end. And he turned up evidence he was right...
Unlike Oxley, who outright forged his supervisor's signature, the other officers generally signed for their supervisors after getting their permission via text or phone. But in such cases -- or when officers were given blank, pre-signed warrants -- it's unclear how closely or even whether a supervisor would have reviewed an individual case.
Legally, the signature on a warrant attests that an authorized supervisor reviewed it and determined that there was probable cause to believe the person named was deportable. The Immigration and Naturalization Act doesn't offer the option of letting unauthorized officers sign for supervisors.
but could afford to pay their own way.