121 people picked up in raids targeting immigrant families

By Jason Buch
Updated 11:46 am, Monday, January 4, 2016



Photo: John Davenport, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrest a man Monday August 17, 2015 on San Antonio's Northwest Side. The agency was conducting a target enforcement operation to round up immigrants with ... more


Immigration officials apprehended 121 people over the weekend as part of raids in three states targeting families from Central America, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced today.

The detentions in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina focused on families who came into the country after May 1, 2014, when DHS began reacting to an influx of families and children seeking asylum, were ordered removed by an immigration judge and “have exhausted appropriate legal remedies,” Johnson said in a statement.

“Given the sensitive nature of taking into custody and removing families with children, a number of precautions were taken as part of this weekend’s operations,” Johnson said. “ICE deployed from around the country a number of female agents and medical personnel to take part in the operations, and, in the course of the operations, ICE exercised prosecutorial discretion in a number of cases for health or other personal reasons.”

Families caught in the raids have started arriving at South Texas detention centers, said Mohammad Abdollahi, an activist with the San Antonio nonprofit Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.

One family each from Houston, Dallas and Kansas City arrived at the Karnes County detention center Sunday, Abdollahi said. RAICES is part of a network of advocacy agencies providing legal services to the detention centers in Karnes County and Dilley.

Abdollahi said the organization had also received reports of raids in San Antonio, New Jersey, Virginia and Atlanta. In the case of the San Antonio raid, a client told RAICES that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had come to her house looking for another family, but no one was detained.

ICE regularly conducts what it calls targeted enforcement operations, when officers fan out looking for specific targets that fall under the bureau’s priorities for deportation. The fact that this weekend’s raids are the first such operation to target families and their announcement just before Christmas drew widespread condemnation from immigration activists.

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