http://www.southtownstar.com/news/81379 ... es.article

30 caught here in 7-state deportation sweep

February 26, 2008

Thirty people, including one in Tinley Park, were arrested in Illinois and Northwest Indiana as part of a seven-state federal sweep to arrest people with outstanding deportation orders.

Fugitive aliens" are illegals who fail to appear for immigration hearings, or who flee after being ordered to leave the country by a federal immigration judge, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement said.

Specific information about the Tinley Park arrest was not immediately available.

Eleven fugitive operation teams made 225 arrests in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New York and Missouri, the agency said. In Chicago, teams of ICE officers and members of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force arrested 24 males and six females.

In addition to Chicago, arrests took place in Aurora, Buffalo Grove, Cicero, Glendale Heights, Melrose Park, Niles, Skokie and Tinley Park in Illinois, as well as East Chicago, Griffith and Hammond, Ind. Those arrested were from Cuba, Guatemala, India, Israel, Jordan, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Syria, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

ICE established its Fugitive Operations Program in 2003 to eliminate the nation's backlog of immigration fugitives and ensure deportation orders handed down by immigration judges are enforced. Nationwide, ICE Fugitive Operations Teams have arrested more than 72,000 illegal aliens since the first teams were created.

There are about 585,000 fugitive aliens in ICE's databases and last year, for the first time in history, that number declined.