'Targeted' immigration operations in Chicago are 'routine,’ not part of Trump crackdown: officials


Although immigration officials said that they arrested more than 160 people, they downplayed the activities as fairly routine and not tied to any new crackdown.

February 10, 2017 11:03 PM

Immigration officials said Friday evening that they are conducting regular “targeted enforcement” operations in Chicago aimed at apprehending deportable foreign nationals.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gail Montenegro declined to say if there was a surge recently in the operation or to detail how many, or if any, arrests have been made.

"The focus of these operations is no different than the routine, targeted arrests carried out by ICE's Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis," an emailed statement from ICE said.
The operations are conducted professionally and respectfully, according to ICE.

In Los Angeles, immigration officials said they arrested more than 160 people — most of them with criminal history — during an operation this week across Southern California.

The arrests, which officials there have also described as routine and not part of a crackdown promised by President Donald Trump, have sparked fear and anger in immigrant communities.

"ICE regularly conducts targeted enforcement operations during which additional resources and personnel are dedicated to apprehending deportable foreign nationals," according to the statement.

David Marin, director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE in Los Angeles, said the actions taken this week were planned before Trump took office and were comparable to a similar weeklong operation taken last summer that resulted in 200 arrests.

Marin said roughly 75 percent of the people arrested this week had prior felony convictions for crimes that included “sex offenses, assault, robbery and weapons violations.” Most of the 161 people arrested this week had been targeted for removal based on past criminal convictions, but Marin admitted a few people were swept up because they were found to be living in the U.S. illegally while other arrests were being carried out.

"Those were individuals that are in the country illegally, so they had no documentation or any right to be here in the country," he said.

"The rash of these recent reports about ICE checkpoints and random sweeps and the like, it’s all false, and that’s definitely dangerous and irresponsible," Marin said. "Reports like that create panic, and they put communities and law enforcement personnel in unnecessary danger."

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said it was not immediately clear how many of those arrested in California this week had been deported. Marin also sharply criticized activist groups that characterized the operation as an indiscriminate series of raids, claiming such allegations put law enforcement officers and residents at risk.

The Los Angeles-area operation was carried out in conjunction with similar actions in New York, Atlanta and Chicago, according to Kice, who said it was not uncharacteristic for ICE operations to coincide in major cities. Kice could not immediately provide arrest statistics for the operations in other cities.

Los Angeles Times' James Quelly and Chicago Tribune's Rosemary Regina Sobol contributed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-immigration-officials-national-enforcement-operation-is-routine-not-part-of-trump-crackdown-20170210-story.html

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