Thread: ICE arrests 84 across San Diego County

ICE arrests 84 across San Diego County


Kate Morrissey Contact Reporter


Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 84 people across San Diego County in a large-scale enforcement operation over the past two weeks.
ICE reported similar enforcement efforts across the country. ICE officers arrested 150 people around Los Angeles, 98 people in North Texas and Oklahoma, 105 in Michigan and Ohio and 83 in Wisconsin.

The timing of these operations was coincidence and not a coordinated effort, according to Gregory Archambeault, director of San Diego’s ICE field office.

“Our operations teams are out there on a daily basis targeting these folks,” Archambeault said. “If we get a backlog of cases, we’ll try to crack down a little bit and put more resources toward it so we can arrest these folks.”

It took a few weeks to plan this most recent operation, he said.

He attributed some of ICE’s case backlog to people who were released from jail instead of being turned over to the agency because of a California law that limits cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration officials. Twenty-two of the people arrested in the operation, about 26 percent, fell into that category, he said.

About 30 percent of those arrested — 25 people — had criminal convictions, according to ICE. Another 55 percent — 46 people — had been ordered deported and either hadn’t left the U.S. or had been removed and came back.

“They had their day in court and failed to leave the country,” Archambeault said. “We’re going to to continue targeting those people.”

Two of the people arrested were not targets of the operation, Archambeault said. They were collateral arrests, meaning that ICE officers found them while looking for someone else and found that they were in the U.S. without authorization.

Most of those arrested were from Mexico, according to Archambeault, and people from Brazil, China, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Vietnam, Israel and Yemen were among those arrested.

In the agency’s announcement about the operation’s results, ICE highlighted the criminal histories of three people its officers took into custody, including a 38-year-old man from Mexico who has been removed from the U.S. four times. His criminal convictions include drug trafficking and driving under the influence, ICE said.

The man was charged with illegal re-entry and will be prosecuted in federal criminal court. Two others arrested during the operation will be prosecuted, Archambeault said.

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