Law enforcement officials arrested more than 2,000 convicted criminal immigrants in a week-long raid, the Department of Homeland Security announced Monday. The nationally-coordinated operation, dubbed “Cross Check” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) nabbed foreign nationals from 94 countries who have a wide array of criminal records including serious felony convictions. But nearly half, or 960, of all the “worst of the worst” offenders were individuals whose most serious crimes were misdemeanors. Some of those immigrants finished their criminal sentences years ago and have since turned their lives around.
Among those immigrants is a 42-year-old immigrant from the Middle East who faces possible persecution or death if he’s deported because of his religious belief. The immigrant, whom his wife referred to only by the pseudonym Rick, reportedly became undocumented in 1981 at the age of nine when U.S. immigration officials lost his citizenship application that his father filed for him. His siblings are all U.S. citizens.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana holds up a counterfeit flask during a counterfeit ticket and merchandise news conference for NFL Super Bowl XLIX on Jan. 29 in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
WASHINGTON – Federal authorities, under pressure from Congress to crack down on foreigners with criminal records who have eluded deportation, announced thousands of arrests on Monday.
Operation Cross Check resulted in the arrest of 2,059 convicted criminals who are subject to removal from the United States. The operation ran from March 1 to March 5. More than 1,000 of those arrested have felony convictions, including manslaughter, child pornography, robbery, kidnapping and rape.
“These are the worst of the worst criminals. At least 1,013 of these had multiple criminal convictions,” said Sarah Saldaña, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and until two months ago, the Dallas-based U.S. attorney. “These are not people we want out in our neighborhoods.”
(Update: 274 of the arrests were in Texas, an ICE official said.)
Some 58 are known gang members, and 89 are convicted sex offenders. Roughly a quarter of those arrested had previously been deported and re-entered the United States illegally and 163 of those 476 will be charged with illegal re-entry after deportation, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison.
Nearly everyone arrested in this round-up fall under the top two enforcement priority categories spelled out in President Barack Obama’s controversial immigration orders, detailed in a Nov. 20 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. The memo sets out priorities that, in part, part, protects some 5 million people from deportation.
“By focusing on those that pose the greatest risk to our communities, we are marshaling our limited resources” in the most rational way, Saldaña told reporters at a news conference at ICE headquarters. “By taking dangerous criminals off our streets and removing them from the country we are addressing a very serious security and public safety vulnerability.”
Republicans have been howling over a report showing that in 2013, some 36,007 “criminal aliens” were released. These are people eligible for deportation who had been convicted of a crime unrelated to immigration. Among those were 193 killers and 303 kidnappers.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has been highlighting that 1,000 of those released were later convicted of new crimes.
Obama administration officials touted the arrests as a sign of progress.
“It’s a remarkable achievement for the men and women of Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” said Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. This is the sixth such operation since early 2011, he said, “and it has been extraordinarily successful.”
The five previous operations led to 13,214 arrests combined.
Some of those arrested face criminal prosecution. Others are already under a deportation order and could be removed immediately. Others cannot be removed until an administrative procedure or hearing before an immigration judge.
Last year, DHS reported that 315,943 individuals were removed from the United States. Mayorkas wasn’t sure if this year’s pace is on track but he emphasized that under Johnson’s memo, public safety and national security are the top priorities, rather than any numerical target.
DHS officials didn’t immediately provide a state-by-state breakdown of arrests. Nor could they say how many of those arrested initially qualified for protection from deportation under the president’s deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) policy.
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