The federal government’s relationship with sanctuary cities has become so strained that some jurisdictions automatically reject emails from ICE.gov addresses, the agency’s acting director told The Washington Times.

The problem, Patrick J. Lechleitner said, is that sanctuaries refuse to cooperate not only with his deportation division but also with criminal investigators. Homeland Security Investigations pursues sex traffickers, child pornographers and gangs, in addition to migrant smugglers and document fraudsters.

For years, leaders at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hoped to persuade sanctuaries to cooperate with the immigration and criminal law enforcement missions.

Mr. Lechleitner said something had to give.

“What we can control within the department is rebranding so people can actually know what we are doing,” he told The Times in an exclusive interview. “So that’s kind of where the HSI branding came from: It’s allowing HSI to get their message out there and to do their jobs in a more meaningful way with jurisdictions that quite frankly are more reticent to deal with them.”

He has given HSI a new internet home under DHS.gov. The Homeland Security Department oversees ICE.

That alone should solve the issue of sanctuary jurisdictions rejecting HSI emails.

He also has restructured task forces and issued guidance to further separate HSI from the deportation side of the agency. The goal is to give HSI more room to operate.

“If you think about it, the Marine Corps is part of the Navy. … But it’s the Marine Corps. They know exactly what the Marine Corps does versus what the Navy does, traditionally. That’s exactly the idea for HSI,” Mr. Lechleitner said.

Mr. Lechleitner took over as acting director in July. He inherited what may be the toughest position in the federal government, given its central role in immigration politics and its duty as the deportation and immigration arrest agency.

ICE hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed director in more than seven years. The last was Sarah Saldana, who left at the end of the Obama administration. Mr. Lechleitner has been the ninth acting director since then.

President Trump and President Biden have submitted nominations, but none has survived the toxic immigration politics on Capitol Hill.

In his interview with The Times, Mr. Lechleitner addressed one of those key battles: He wants Congress to fund 50,000 detention beds for his agency.

That is more than the 41,500 Congress allocated for fiscal 2024 and far more than the 34,000 Mr. Biden requested in his budget for fiscal 2025.

“I would love that to be a little higher, you know, so that we would have more bandwidth to handle the surges so we could detain more appropriately. It would take some of the stress off our facilities,” Mr. Lechleitner said.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress this year that he would support 50,000 detention beds in exchange for new authorities. Mr. Lechleitner attached no such conditions.

“We could use 50,000,” he said.

The latest House Republican spending proposal for fiscal 2025 includes money for 50,000 beds. The Democratic-led Senate has yet to produce its version.

Mr. Lechleitner said ICE can detain the big safety and security threats among the migrant population at the current level but needs extra beds to help deter more illegal immigrants.

ICE has facilities to hold only single adults for any length of time. Unaccompanied children are turned over to the Health and Human Services Department. That leaves families.

Tae Johnson, Mr. Lechleitner’s predecessor as director, dismantled ICE’s family detention facilities. That means families that aren’t immediately ousted are caught and released.

Mr. Lechleitner said ICE could restore the family facilities, but it would take months and significant investment to get the properties up to standards.

ICE was created during a government reorganization after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that also birthed the Homeland Security Department.

The agency combines a legal affairs division, which argues immigration cases in the immigration courts; the civil immigration-enforcement side, which is the Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations; and HSI.

Some HSI backers have suggested it should be split into its own agency, but that would take an act of Congress. The rebrand is the best Mr. Lechleitner and Mr. Mayorkas can do alone.

Jonathan Fahey, who served as acting director of ICE at the end of the Trump administration, said the Biden approach makes enforcement and removal worse by confirming the “stigma” around detention and deportation work.

“You’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re separating because those other guys are the bad ones, and we’re the good ones,’” he said. “That’s really harmful to those people. You say to the public, ‘OK, these are bad people.’

“They can’t outright abolish ICE, but you can delegitimize them in their mission, which has the effect of abolishing,” said Mr. Fahey, now a partner at the law firm Holtzman Vogel.

He said the Biden administration could have gone on the offensive against sanctuaries and withheld funding. Instead, the administration has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into sanctuary jurisdictions to help them resettle migrants caught and released on Mr. Biden’s watch.

“The appropriate response should be: ‘If you don’t want to change, we’re going to find ways to take money away from you,’” Mr. Fahey said.

Jon Feere, who served as chief of staff at ICE during the Trump years, said Homeland Security could find other ways to pressure communities.

“ICE is changing its own behavior to accommodate sanctuary jurisdictions when it should be doing the exact opposite: changing the behavior of sanctuaries through strong policies,” he said.

“Why is TSA happily managing air travel at the San Francisco International Airport, for example, when that city is actively undermining TSA’s sister agencies?” he asked.

He said he doubted the rebrand would work.

“Of course, the Biden administration is as anti-ICE and lawless as the sanctuaries, so there’s really no hope without a change in administration,” said Mr. Feere, now director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies. “In the meantime, these efforts just make ICE look weak and do nothing to unite DHS.”

Sanctuary cities portray ICE as a terror to their communities, swooping in to pluck hardworking illegal immigrants out of church pews and hospital beds. ICE backers say the agency’s deportation operations are much more focused on new illegal border-crossers and serious criminals within the illegal immigrant population.

Mr. Lechleitner acknowledged some consternation within ERO about his moves but doubted it was widespread.

“There’s always going to be a perception of that. I don’t think that that’s the rank-and-file,” he told The Times. “Some of this is just identity politics from HSI. They want the identity.”

He said the rebranding will pay dividends if communities are willing to work with HSI.

“In a perfect world, my perfect world, it’s just complete open cooperation, law enforcement to law enforcement. That’s what it should be. I understand the perfect is not what’s going to happen, at least right now. So I’ll work with anyone,” he said.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.