ICE: Largest Criminal Immigrant Sweep Carried Out In LA

LOS ANGELES -- More than 240 immigrants in the Riverside/San Bernardino area were arrested as part of a two-week federal sweep that netted more than 1,300 immigrants who either had criminal records or ignored deportation orders, officials said Wednesday.

Julie Myers, assistant secretary of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called the two-week sweep "one of the largest immigration enforcement actions ICE has ever taken."

The 1,327 individuals who were arrested came from 32 countries, including Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Ireland and Russia.



Myers said nearly 90 percent of those arrested were either criminal immigrants, immigrants who ignored final deportation orders or deportees who returned to the United States illegally.

The remaining 146 were people who could not prove they were in the United States legally. Nearly 600 of those arrested have already been deported.

ICE officers located and arrested 530 immigration violators who were at large in five Southland counties -- Los Angeles (187), Orange (62), Riverside/San Bernardino (245) and Ventura (36).

The sweep also went into Southern California jails, with agents arresting 797 previous unidentified deportable foreign nationals who were scheduled for release from lock-ups in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

"Here in this operation, we located some very dangerous aliens, including those involved in street gangs, as well as those with various criminal records include drug trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault," said Myers.

"Today's success is the result of the hard work and dedication of our Fugitive Operations Program teams," said Myers. "They seek to reduce the fugitive alien population and to keep criminal aliens off the street."

The Fugitive Operations Program was established in 2003 to eliminate the nation's backlog of immigration fugitives and ensure that deportation orders handed down by immigration judges are enforced, federal officials said.

"Too often in the past those orders were ignored and aliens who were deported found ways to slip back into the United States," said Myers. "Those days are no longer."

The 1,327 arrests surpassed the 1,297 undocumented immigrants arrested by ICE agents at meat processing plants in six states last December, part of an investigation into identity theft.