Los Angeles Times
By Joseph Serna and Kate Linthicum
August 31, 2015
More
than 240 people were taken into federal custody last week across
Southern California after a four-day sweep for immigrants in the country
illegally with criminal records,
authorities announced Monday.
The
enforcement action ended on Thursday with 244 foreign nationals in the
custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement – the majority of them
with at least one felony
conviction on their record, authorities said.
Federal
agents are briefed before going out into the Riverside community to
apprehend immigrants who may be deportable. In the past, the agency
would simply contact local
jails where such immigrants were being detained and ask jail officials
to hold them until an ICE van could pick them up, but hundreds of
counties across the country stopped honoring such requests after a
federal judge last year found that practice unconstitutional.
Federal agents prepare to raid a house in Riverside to apprehend an immigrant without legal status and who may be deportable.
It
was the most successful four-day sweep of its kind in the region, ICE
said. But an ICE spokeswoman cautioned against concluding that crime
involving immigrants is up.
“One
of the challenges we’re facing is because of state law and local
policies, more individuals who are potentially deportable with
significant criminal histories are
being released onto the street instead of being turned over to ICE,”
said agency spokeswoman Virginia Kice. “I think to infer from [the
sweep] that potentially foreign nationals are committing more crimes is
flawed.”
Among
the people captured, 191 were from Mexico and the rest were from 21
other countries including France, Ghana, Peru and Thailand, the agency
said. A majority of them
had convictions for violent felonies or weapons or sex abuse charges.
The rest had past convictions for “significant or multiple misdemeanors,” ICE said in a news release.
Not
everyone captured in the sweep was in the country illegally, Kice said.
Some are documented nationals who may be deported because of a recent
crime.
In
the past it was easier for ICE agents to locate and deport immigrants
who had been convicted of crimes. The agency would contact local jails
and ask that such inmates
be held until an ICE van could pick them up.
But
last year a federal judge found that practice illegal, prompting
hundreds of counties to stop honoring the detainer requests. As a
result, ICE officials say they have
to rely on costly and dangerous manhunts or multi-day sweeps like the
one conducted last week.
The sweep was led by the agency’s National Fugitive Operations program, which finds at-large criminals for deportation.
Originally
formed to locate immigrants who had failed to comply with a judge's
deportation order, the program is increasingly being used to find
immigrants with criminal
convictions who have recently been let out of jail. Of the more than
27,000 people whom ICE arrested nationwide last fiscal year, which ended
Sept. 30, 2014, about 78% had criminal convictions, according to ICE
data.
Among
those captured was Vincente Onofre-Ramirez, 35, who authorities say was
convicted in 2002 of sexual abuse with force in New York.
In
Sunland, authorities arrested a 50-year-old Salvadorian national
convicted of two criminal counts of child sex abuse in Los Angeles
County; in Upland, a 46-year-old
man from Guatemala who previously served 10 years in prison for
sexually abusing two children was arrested.
But
not everyone arrested in the sweep was a violent felon. Those who have
not been deported before and found to have illegally re-entered the
country or aren’t facing
new charges will have an administrative hearing with a judge.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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