Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 2,000 people as part of a five-week national operation that mostly targeted illegal immigrants with violent criminal histories.
The federal agency said roughly 85%, or 1,700 people, of those taken into custody between July 13 and Aug. 20 had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges on top of illegally residing in the United States. These included more than 770 cases of assault, 500 domestic violence cases, 140 sex offenses, 200 family offenses, and 25 homicides. In addition, there were more than 110 sex offenses involving a minor, 75 harassment cases, 35 hit-and-run cases, and 30 robberies. Some people had multiple charges or convictions.
“The aliens targeted during this operation preyed on men, women and children in our communities, committing serious crimes and, at times, repeatedly hurting their victims,” Tony Pham, who recently took over ICE, said in a statement. “By focusing our efforts on perpetrators of crimes against people, we’re able to remove these threats from our communities and prevent future victimization from occurring. Through our targeted enforcement efforts, we are eliminating the threat posed by these criminals, many of whom are repeat offenders.”
ICE, tasked by Congress with arresting, detaining, and removing illegal immigrants, said in March it would temporarily scale back its operations because of the coronavirus pandemic. The 2,000 arrested in five weeks, if indicative of arrests throughout fiscal 2020, would put ICE significantly behind the 143,000 arrests made in fiscal 2019.
The number of people deported by ICE has increased during the last few years but remains much lower than average over the past decade. In 2019, ICE returned 267,258 people to their home countries. The number was up from 256,085 in 2018 and 226,119 in 2017, which included eight months in which President Trump was in office.
