The sweeps that led to hundreds of arrests in several states during the first full week of February were called routine by agents, but fostered anxiety among immigrant communities. Most arrests were made at residences or public areas, and not places of work, and people with known offenses were targeted. “We’re not going out to Walmart to check papers,” one official said.
U.S. federal immigration agents arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in several states during the first full week of February, Reuters reported, in what officials called routine enforcement actions.
Reports of the immigration sweeps sparked concern among immigration advocates and families, Reuters reported, coming on the heels of President Donald Trump’s executive order barring refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations, even though that order has since been struck down by subsequent judicial review.
“The fear coursing through immigrant homes and the native-born Americans who love immigrants as friends and family is palpable,” Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a statement. “Reports of raids in immigrant communities are a grave concern.”
Only five of 161 people arrested in Southern California would not have been enforcement priorities under the Obama administration, David Marin, Director of Enforcement and Removal for the Los Angeles field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told Reuters.
That agency did not release a total number of detainees, but Reuters also reported that its Atlanta office, which covers three states, arrested 200 people, according to Bryan Cox, a spokesman for that office.
In a conference call with reporters, Marin called the five-day operation an “enforcement surge” and compared it to actions that were taken last summer in Los Angeles under former President Barack Obama.
“The rash of these recent reports about ICE checkpoints and random sweeps, that’s all false and that’s dangerous and irresponsible,” Marin said. “Reports like that create a panic.”
Of the people arrested in Southern California, Marin said, only 10 did not have criminal records and of those, five had prior deportation orders.
Michael Kagan, a Professor of Immigration Law at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, told Reuters that immigration advocates are concerned that the arrests could signal the beginning of more aggressive enforcement and increased deportations under President Trump.
“It sounds as if the majority are people who would have been priorities under Obama as well,” Kagan said in a telephone interview. “But the others may indicate the first edge of a new wave of arrests and deportations.”
Trump recently broadened the categories of people who could be targeted for immigration enforcement to anyone who had been charged with a crime, removing an Obama-era exception for people convicted of traffic misdemeanors, Kagan noted.
The New York Times’ report on the sweep put the total number of arrests at more than 600 across 11 states.
One official told the Times that all of the people who were targeted were in violation of “some sort of immigration law,” with some having convictions for offenses including rape and aggravated assault.
“We’re not going out to Walmart to check papers—we know who we are going out to seek,” the official said.
In the New York area, including Long Island, the Times reported, the latest sweep brought fewer arrests than during an Obama administration enforcement sweep in August, when 58 people were arrested.
The Obama administration was especially active in deporting unauthorized immigrants, the Times noted, most notably in 2012, when 409,849 people were deported. In 2015, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the arrests of more than 2,000 people nationwide in one week, targeting criminals. And the Obama administration was still sweeping up low-priority immigrants last summer.
Still, Steven Choi, the Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, told the Times that the action in the first week of February was worrisome, because it seemed to be only the beginning.
“It really doesn’t matter if it’s business as usual from ICE’s perspective — at some point, we know that they will start to ramp up enforcement activity,” Mr. Choi said.
Choi noted that a January 25 executive order from President Trump about ensuring public safety included the bolstering of the immigration force.
That executive order, the Times noted, also vastly expanded the group of immigrants considered priorities for deportation, including those without criminal records.
When asked by the Times if the recent operations had incorporated those new priorities, a Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because operations were continuing, said, “The president has been clear in saying that [Homeland Security] should be focused on removing individuals who pose a threat to public safety, who have been charged with criminal offenses, who have committed multiple immigration violations or who have been deported and re-entered the country illegally.”
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