Immigration agents arrest hundreds in raids
U.S. immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states this week in a series of raids that marked the first large-scale enforcement of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 26 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally.
The raids, which officials said targeted known criminals, also netted some immigrants who did not have criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during former President Barack Obama’s administration that aimed to just corral and deport those who had committed crimes.
Trump has pledged to deport up to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Last month he also made a change to the Obama administration’s policy of prioritizing deportation for convicted criminals, substantially broadening the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target, to include those with only minor offenses or those with no convictions at all.
Immigration officials confirmed that agents this week raided homes and workplaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina, netting hundreds of people. But Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said they were part of “routine” immigration enforcement actions.
Christensen said the raids, which began Monday and ended Friday, found People in Los Angeles protest Thursday against President Donald Trump’s immigration polices following ICE raids. undocumented immigrants from a dozen Latin American countries.
“We’re talking about people who are threats to public safety or a threat to the integrity of the immigration system,” she said, noting that the majority of those detained were serious criminals, including some who had been convicted of murder and domestic violence.
Immigration activists said the crackdown went beyond the six states DHS identified, and said they had also documented ICE raids of unusual intensity during the past two days in Florida, Kansas, Texas and Northern Virginia.
That undocumented immigrants with no criminal records were arrested and could potentially be deported sent a shock through immigrant communities nationwide.
“This is clearly the first wave of attacks under the Trump administration, and we know this isn’t going to be the only one,” Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, an immigrant youth organization, said Friday during a conference call with immigration advocates.
ICE agents in the Los Angeles area Thursday swept a number of individuals into custody over the course of an hour, seizing them from their homes and on their way to work, activists said.
David Marin, ICE’s field director in the Los Angeles area, said in a conference call with reporters Friday that 75 percent of the approximately 160 people detained in the operation this week had felony convictions; the rest had misdemeanors or were in the U.S. illegally. Officials said Friday night that 37 of those detained in Los Angeles have been deported to Mexico.
Some activists in Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles suggested that the raids might be retaliation for those cities’ so-called sanctuary city policies.
Agovernment aide familiar with the raids said it is possible the predominantly daytime operations — a departure from the Obama administration’s night raids — meant to “send a message to the community that the Trump deportation force is in effect.”
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant advocacy group, said the wave of detentions harks back to the George W. Bush administration, when workplace raids to sweep up all undocumented workers were common.