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| Daily round-up of illegals are causing widespread fears in LA. |
Police and immigration officials denied the “raids” and disputed the claim that the arrests were part of a more stringent approach, saying any detentions were simply part of “routine” enforcement activities. But a flurry of calls regarding arrests spurred immigration attorneys into rapid response efforts, and prompted protests on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.
“We know the daily patterns of people being picked up and taken,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or CHIRLA, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There’s a natural flow of enforcement that happens every day. But this was not normal.”
According to Salas, the “raids” were taking place in Van Nuys, San Bernardino, Downey, Santa Paula and Oxnard. Immigration attorneys went to the downtown Los Angeles detention and removal facility Thursday afternoon and saw five white vans and one bus filled with people leave the premises.
When an attorney asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement for information about clients who were detained, an ICE officer said more information was needed to identify the individuals, because more than 100 people were currently detained in the facility, Salas said. Usually only one or two people are detained in the center on a given day, Salas added.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California tweeted “URGENT: ICE conducted multiple raids of homes across the city.” But a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that the arrests were part of the agency’s “routine” enforcement activities.
“Our operations are targeted and lead driven, prioritizing individuals who pose a risk to our communities. Examples would include known street gang members, child sex offenders, and deportable foreign nationals with significant drug trafficking convictions,” the statement said. “To that end, ICE’s routine immigration enforcement actions are ongoing and we make arrests every day.”
Salas said immigration attorneys heard of multiple examples of people detained Thursday who were not violent offenders. One man wasn’t even convicted of a crime, and another individual had simply received a speeding ticket, Salas said.
Many law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department have promised not to take part in the mass deportations Trump has called for. Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Bob Green told the Los Angeles Times Thursday that the department knew of no ICE sweeps going on in the San Fernando Valley.
“There is information that is out there that is wrong,” he said, adding that his department would not participate in any federal immigration raids. “We are working hard with the immigrant communities to dispel fears.”
The Pomona Police Department released a statement warning community members of an “immigration checkpoint hoax” that had been circulating on social media claiming that officers had joined immigration officials conducting immigration checkpoints.
“We want our community to know that The Pomona Police Department is not participating in any immigration checkpoints nor are we aware of any such checkpoints scheduled in the City of Pomona,” the department said in the release. “We encourage the community to always fact check to avoid “fake news”.
Meanwhile, immigration advocates called on ICE officials to release information regarding the number of people arrested in recent days. “In most instances they’ll give us information about operations, not specifics, but they just weren’t wiling to do that,” Salas said. “That’s the problem that we’re finding, this lack of communication.”
“Who are these people?” she added. “How many were on this list that were all criminal aliens?” A number of local lawmakers joined immigrant rights advocates in calling upon ICE to release additional information. California Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) released a statement in reference to reports that ICE conducted raids across Southern California.
In a hearing before the State Senate Public Safety committee, de Leon (D-Los Angeles) made it personal when pitching SB54. The proposal would prohibit local law enforcement in the state from working with federal government on immigration issues and violations.
Referencing President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration, de
Leon said, “The reality is, with the executive order and the criteria that has
been developed, many individuals, I can tell you half of my family, would be
eligible for deportation under the executive order.”
On Twitter, many individuals suggested
that de Leon should be arrested for condoning illegal immigration in his own
family. State Sen. Andy Vidak (R-Visalia) said the bill would make California
less safe. “De Leon’s hubris gives sanctuary to violent criminals who are in
this country illegally,” Vidak said.
Kevin De Leon said like his family, many of the undocumented immigrants in this country are peaceful and want to make a better life for their families:
Kevin De Leon said like his family, many of the undocumented immigrants in this country are peaceful and want to make a better life for their families:
“I can tell you half of my family would
be eligible for deportation under Trump’s executive order, because if they got
a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a
false driver’s license prior to us passing AB60, if they got a false green
card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows
that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification.
That’s what you need to survive, to work. They are eligible for massive
deportation."
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| Nearly 1 million illegals in LA are somehow related to or protected by Democrat politicians like De Leon while Republican Donald Trump is trying to deport them all back to Mexico. |
Federal immigration authorities launched a new wave of raids and other actions in several states over the past five days aimed at sweeping up people who are in this country illegally.
It's not known how many people were rounded up across the country, but immigration
advocates say they've received reports of raids in California, Texas, Virginia,
North Carolina, Georgia, New York and Kansas. The ICE operations are the first
to take place since President Trump issued his Jan. 26 executive order
expanding the priorities for enforcement.
President Trump has promised to deport
2 to 3 million immigrants with criminal records, but immigration experts say
that while the Department of Homeland Security estimates there are 1.9 million
"removable criminal aliens" in the United States, only about 690,000
are in this country illegally and have been convicted of a felony or serious
misdemeanor.
Preliminary reports from southern
California give an indication of the scope of the ICE operations. An official
with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in southern California, David
Marin, called the actions routine "surge operations" that target
"priority cases," in other words, people in this country illegally
who have criminal convictions.
"We made 161 arrests, and of those
161, 151 of those had prior criminal convictions. ... The majority of them were
felons and those felons which had prior convictions included sex offenses,
domestic violence, assault, robbery and weapons violations, just to name a
few," said Marin in a press teleconference held late Friday.
Marin said that of the ten others, five
had impending deportation orders or had been deported and had illegally
returned to the United States. The remaining five had no criminal records, but
were in this country without documents.
Immigrant advocates dispute officials'
claims that the operations were routine. "What they're trying to do is a
really concerted effort to instill fear and terrorize our communities,"
said David Abud, an organizer with the National Day Labor Organizing Network
based in Los Angeles told NPR. "It's a way in which Trump and ICE are
retaliating against sanctuary jurisdictions," he added.
As we reported in the Two-Way, the
majority of people in this country illegally are concentrated in 20
metropolitan areas in the country. The Washington Post quoted one immigration
official who was not authorized to speak publicly because of the sensitive
nature of the operation as saying, "Big cities tend to have a lot of
illegal immigrants. They're going to a target-rich environment."
There were anecdotal reports of ICE
staging traffic checkpoints and random sweeps of people suspected of being here
illegally. ICE's Marin called those reports "dangerous and
irresponsible."
Marin declined to discuss any
connection between the raids and the president's recent executive order, except
to say that the operations had been planned for weeks before that order was
issued.
