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Immigration `ICE POLICE' sweep South Florida
By ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@ElNuevoHerald.com
In the pre-dawn darkness, a small party of federal agents gathered in the parking lot of a strip mall at the corner of Northwest 67th Avenue and the Palmetto Expressway in Miami Gardens.

They strapped on bullet-proof vests and T-shirts with the legend ICE POLICE on the front or back. Then, they discussed plans to pick up their ``targets'' -- fugitive foreign nationals convicted of crimes and marked for deportation.

As dawn lightened the sky on Wednesday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers climbed aboard five vehicles and drove in a convoy to the homes of two ``targets,'' residents of separate apartment complexes in Miami Gardens. Though neither man was found, other ICE officers elsewhere in South Florida, other parts of Florida and eight other southern states and Puerto Rico detained 596 foreign-born fugitive criminal convicts in a vast sweep code-named Operation Cross Check. Three other foreign nationals arrested had no criminal convictions, but were not simply undocumented immigrants. One was wanted for murder in Florida and the other two had been previously deported and had returned.

A photographer and a reporter from El Nuevo Herald were allowed to tag along early Wednesday on the arrest efforts in Miami Gardens which were part of the three-day Operation Cross Check that began Tuesday.

It was one of the largest sweeps of foreign criminal convicts since ICE was created in 2003 in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks. Two previous ones, that resulted in an average of more than 200 arrests each, occurred in Texas in February and the other in California in September 2009.

John Morton, the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said at a Washington news conference Friday that the vast majority of the detainees were fugitives, have criminal convictions and final orders of deportation. In some cases, some had been previously deported and had illegally re-entered the country. They included criminals convicted of serious crimes including murder, assault, sex offenses, drug trafficking and alien smuggling.

``It was an extremely successful operation,'' Morton said. ``The most successful that we've had to day.'' ICE operations in which foreign nationals are detained for deportation have become increasingly controversial among immigrant rights groups.

The controversy is a reflection of the activists' frustration that President Barack Obama has failed to push immigration reform as a national priority. Obama on Wednesday signaled a possible decision to withdraw immigration reform from his agenda of priorities saying said there ``may not be an appetite'' in Congress this year for legalization of undocumented immigrants.

Immigrant rights activists have focused their objections on what they claim is growing collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement in identifying and detaining foreign nationals, and that in the sweeps for criminals many noncriminal undocumented immigrants also get picked up.

Operation Crosscheck this week appeared to be a response by ICE to the criticism. ICE officials insisted that all the detainees were criminal convicts and that their focus remains the detention and deportation of dangerous foreign-born criminals.

During the early morning operation Wednesday local police did not participate directly in arrest efforts.

ICE officers did call Miami Gardens police just before they moved in on the first target and asked that the agency send a uniformed officer.

The idea was not to seek assistance for the arrest but to reassure local residents that the operation was legitimate since local police was there. Two Miami Gardens officers responded, and they merely observed the operation.

ICE carries out arrest operations systematically as part of a strategy to locate primarily deportable criminal convicts. This marks a shift since Obama came to office last year. Previously, ICE officers detained a mixture of foreign nationals including criminals, fugitives from deportation orders and undocumented immigrants.

Periodically, detention operations are intensified and this is what happened this week with the sweeps in three states.

The El Nuevo Herald photographer and reporter were allowed to witness two arrest attempts in Miami Gardens early Wednesday. Both failed because the ``targets'' were not home, but the operations provided a window into the tactics of ICE officers assigned to track down fugitive ``criminal aliens.''

In one case, a woman who answered the door said the person ICE agents were looking for did not live there. In the second case, the apartment was empty and a building janitor said the Nicaraguan family had been evicted the previous month.

The officers set the operation in motion when they pulled out of the strip mall parking lot at the junction of the Palmetto and Northwest 67th Avenue in a convoy of five vehicles.

They moved quickly toward an address a few miles away. Before deploying at the site, the vehicles pulled into the small parking lot of a convenience store that was still closed.

From there, one of the officers called Miami Gardens police and requested the presence of a uniformed officer in a police car. A few minutes later, two black and white Miami Gardens police cars showed up.

The convoy moved out again, followed by the two police cars. Just down the block, the convoy stopped in front of a complex of three-story apartment buildings.

The officers climbed out of their vehicles and deployed in front and behind the building. Two officers climbed two flights of stairs and one pounded on the door of one of the apartments.

``Police,'' he yelled as a faint woman's voice asked ``Who is it?''

The woman finally opened the door and persuaded the officer that the person they were looking for did not live there.

The ICE officers drove back to the initial staging point in the strip mall parking lot by the Palmetto.

They began preparing for their second target, also nearby. Soon the ICE convoy was on the move again and after a few blocks drove into another apartment complex. Again, the officers fanned out in front and behind a five-story building.

Two officers knocked on a door of a ground floor apartment. No answer.

On the radio, another officer posted in the back of the building, announced: ``The apartment looks empty.''

A janitor who was walking by informed the officers that the ``Nicaraguan family'' whose members lived in the apartment had been evicted a month ago.

The officers left.