Federal agents conduct sweeping immigration enforcement raids in at least 6 states [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Federal agents conduct sweeping immigration enforcement raids in at least 6 states

By Abigail Hauslohner, Lisa Rein and Sandhya Somashekhar February 10 at 4:04 PM

U.S. immigration authorities launched a series of raids, traffic stops and checkpoints in at least half a dozen states across the country on Thursday and Friday, sweeping up an unknown number of undocumented immigrants, immigration lawyers and advocates said. ... The raids, which appeared to target scores of undocumented immigrants, including those without criminal records, mark the first largescale episode of immigration enforcement inside the United States since President Trump’s Jan. 26 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.
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Gillian Christensen, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), confirmed that ICE agents this week had raided homes and workplaces in Atlanta, the Los Angeles area and two other cities that she declined to identify, as part of “routine” immigration enforcement actions. ICE does not use the term raids. ... But immigration activists said Friday that they had documented ICE raids of unusual intensity in the last 48 hours in Vista, Pomona and Compton, Calif.; Austin, Dallas, and Pflugerville, Texas; Alexandria and Annandale, Va.; Charlotte and Burlington, N.C.; Plant City, Fla.; the Hudson Valley region of New York; and Wichita, Kan.
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Meanwhile, immigration advocacy and legal aid groups said ICE had declined to give them any information about how many people had been taken into custody. ... Advocates from United We Dream, the Center for Community Change and Make the Road said on a Friday conference call with reporters that they believed hundreds to have been detained, including undocumented immigrants who had no prior criminal record. They said some had been deported immediately.

“We cannot understate the level of panic and terror that is running through many immigrant communities,” said Walter Barrientos of Make the Road in New York City. ... ICE agents had raided homes, and were “not just detaining individuals they are looking for ... but in fact, taking anyone else in the community, or in these homes who does not have immigration status at the moment, or who is not able to prove citizenship,” Barrientos said.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-agents-conduct-sweeping-immigration-enforcement-raids-in-at-least-6-states/2017/02/10/4b9f443a-efc8-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html