While gun reform has dominated most of the political conversation in the new year, less attention has been paid to immigration raids conducted across the country by the Department of Homeland Security – specifically over the past weekend, when some 121 adults, families, and unaccompanied children were arrested for deportation back to Central America.
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Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the raids as part of the administration’s effort to tamp down on the already ballooning level of illegal migration from Central America at the border.
In Atlanta, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights said it fielded continual calls from people who reported Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents barging into their homes in the middle of the night.
The White House would not comment on Monday on specifics of the weekend apprehensions by immigration authorities. They had been ordered removed by an immigration court and exhausted legal remedies and asylum claims, it said.
So far, authorities have netted 121 people who are in the process of being deported back to their home countries, Johnson said.
The same church offered sanctuary in November 2014 to Eleazar Misheal Perez Cabrera a day before the Guatemalan immigrant was supposed to voluntarily leave the country after a judge issued an deportation order. Mejia fled from her violence-plagued homeland after her brother was murdered by gang members, entering the USA illegally with her son in the 2014 wave of Central American migrants seeking more peaceful, prosperous lives here.
“In the spring and summer of 2014 we faced a significant spike in families and unaccompanied children from Central America attempting to cross our southern border illegally”, Johnson continued.
An ICE official contacted by The Elkhart Truth countered talk of activity by the federal agency in Elkhart County, which has a sizable population of immigrants and Hispanic people. “If they feel their detention efforts aren’t serving as a deterrent, they need to prove to people they will face real consequences if they come”. It also recommended that they carry with them at all times phone numbers of family members, a lawyer and the nearest consulate.You have rights that must be respected….
Some Democrats and immigrant-rights group condemned the Obama administration for the raids.
Gutierrez told the Times the ICE raid woke her children, who were “shaking from fear” as the Mejias were taken into custody.
CARA listed some “trends” they have encountered with eight families that were arrested in the immigration operation and detained again in Dilley.
The feds plan to continue to expand a messaging campaign to convince families to stay in their home countries, illustrating the “dangerous realities of the journey” while “highlighting the recent enforcement operations”, Johnson said.
“I think about how happy I was when he was first elected, and here we are seven years later”, said Sarang Sekhavat, federal policy director for the MA immigrant coalition. “We must enforce the law in accordance with these priorities, and secure our borders”.
But in an interview last month, Johnson suggested that the administration would focus on evildoers, not families with children. ICE officers and agents often arrive without warrants because immigration judges issue final orders of removal, not warrants in most cases.
“They are a cruel reminder of a discredited policy”, he said in the statement.
“We will not stand by and allow this to happen to families who came to the U.S.to escape extreme violence and poverty”, said FIRM spokesperson Kica Matos in a statement.
Lawyers argued the illegal immigrants had legitimate asylum claims they were unable to make in court.
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Among those ICE attempted to detain this weekend was a Central American mother who was ordered deported but has an appeal pending, according to Mohammad Abdollahi, a spokesman for the San Antonio-based legal advocacy group that she has been working with.
