Homeland Security Plans Massive Roundups of Illegal Aliens This Month
SEP 7 2017, 7:59 PM ET
Homeland Security Plans Massive Roundups of Undocumented Immigrants
by JULIA AINSLEY and ANDREW BLANKSTEIN
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security is planning nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as "the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE," an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The raids, scheduled over five days beginning Sept. 17, are being called "Operation Mega," according to the document, a memo circulated agency-wide in August.
It is not unusual for ICE operations to target immigrants by the hundreds or even low thousands.
The higher-than-usual target number may be partially driven by an effort to reach a deportation goal at the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, one of the officials said.
https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newsc...ux-600-480.jpgImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrest a suspect during a pre-dawn raid on January 17, 2007 in Santa Ana, California. Mark Avery / AP file
Operation Mega is still in the planning stage and its details may change or it may even be cancelled, the officials said, especially as the agency reallocates resources toward rescue operations in Florida ahead of the looming Hurricane Irma.
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If carried out, it would come on the heels of Trump's controversial decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that allows some immigrants who were brought into the United States as children to stay.
Immigration agents often only arrest one-quarter to one-half of the target population due to the difficulty of locating individuals and getting them to open their doors to agents.
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ICE has been planning the operation internally since mid-August and has instructed officers in the field to target adults deemed to be gang members or perpetrators of serious crimes, said one of the officials.
Other undocumented immigrants not suspected of crimes may be swept up in the raids as "collateral," the official said.
Operation Mega would not target juveniles, one of the officials said. And DACA recipients are not at risk for deportation until March 5, 2018, the date President Trump set the program to expire if Congress does not act to make it law.
Department of Homeland spokesman Dave Lapan said Thursday that immigration agents would cease to target non-criminal immigrants seeking relief from Hurricane Irma. The agency followed the same protocol in areas of Texas ravaged by Hurricane Harvey last week.
https://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/newsc...ux-600-480.jpgImmigration detainees walk down a hall at the Theo Lacy Facility, a county jail which houses convicted criminals as well as immigration detainees arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Orange, California on March 14, 2017. Robyn Beck / AFP - Getty Images, file
A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jennifer Elzea, said the agency "is not able to speculate about potential future targeted enforcement actions."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...s-kind-n799691
