U.S. federal immigration agents arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least four states this week in what officials on Friday called routine enforcement actions.
Reports
of immigration sweeps this week sparked concern among immigration
advocates and families, coming on the heels of President Donald Trump's
executive order barring refugees and immigrants from seven
majority-Muslim nations. That order is currently on hold.
"The
fear coursing through immigrant homes and the native-born Americans who
love immigrants as friends and family is palpable," Ali Noorani,
executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a
statement. "Reports of raids in immigrant communities are a grave
concern."
The
enforcement actions took place in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles and surrounding areas, said David Marin, director of enforcement
and removal for the Los Angeles field office of U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.
Only
five of 161 people arrested in Southern California would not have been
enforcement priorities under the Obama administration, he said.
The
agency did not release a total number of detainees. The Atlanta office,
which covers three states, arrested 200 people, Bryan Cox, a spokesman
for the office, said. The 161 arrests in the Los Angeles area were made
in a region that included seven highly populated counties, Marin said.
Marin called the five-day operation an "enforcement surge."
In
a conference call with reporters, he said that such actions were
routine, pointing to one last summer in Los Angeles under former
President Barack Obama.
"The
rash of these recent reports about ICE checkpoints and random sweeps,
that’s all false and that’s dangerous and irresponsible," Marin said.
"Reports like that create a panic.”
He
said that of the people arrested in Southern California, only 10 did
not have criminal records. Of those, five had prior deportation orders.
Michael
Kagan, a professor of immigration law at the University of Nevada at
Las Vegas, said immigration advocates are concerned that the arrests
could signal the beginning of more aggressive enforcement and increased
deportations under Trump.
"It
sounds as if the majority are people who would have been priorities
under Obama as well," Kagan said in a telephone interview. "But the
others may indicate the first edge of a new wave of arrests and
deportations."
Trump
recently broadened the categories of people who could be targeted for
immigration enforcement to anyone who had been charged with a crime,
removing an Obama-era exception for people convicted of traffic
misdemeanors, Kagan said.
(Reporting
by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif., and Kristina Cooke in San
Francisco; Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Peter Henderson and
Leslie Adler)
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