U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 50 international human-rights violators as part of a three-day operation called No Safe Haven II.
The foreign nationals are suspected of everything from torture to ethnic cleansing. The arrests, announced Friday, were a follow-up to last September’s No Safe Haven operation, which aimed to locate suspected human-rights violators living in the U.S. and return them to their home countries.
All 50 had outstanding removal orders and are subject to repatriation to their countries of origin, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ten of the 50 were also convicted criminal aliens, ICE said.
Among those detained were a former Yugoslavian “who arrested and interrogated victims on behalf of a paramilitary organization dedicated to ethnic cleansing”; a South American who beat prisoners and was involved in interrogations that used electric shock torture; an East African who “engaged in torture as an intelligence officer in a specific government regime known to perpetrate torture, murder and other human rights violations”; a felonious Central American who as a military police officer turned over fellow countrymen to a human-rights abusing government; and an Asian person who “performed false sterilizations” and supervised forced abortions.
Since 2004, ICE has arrested almost 300 suspected human-rights offenders and deported more than 740 others. The division of Homeland Security is investigating another 140 suspects.
