ICE detains 119 immigrants with prior convictions that had already been deported once

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the end of an operation that sought to detain undocumented immigrants who had been deported but reentered the United States, reported Fox News.

As part of its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), ICE detained 119 undocumented immigrants between June 1 and June 7 who had already been deported once before. ICE said its operation focused on finding those who had been deported within the last five years. 

The agency also focused on intercepting the undocumented migrants that met the priorities set by the Biden Administration last year, which include recent border crossers, national security threats, and aggravated felons or public safety threats. 

Among the 119 arrested, 110 had prior convictions for crimes ranging from robbery, drug trafficking, and child molestation. 

"ICE is committed to the safe and effective enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws as our officers fulfill our important public safety mission," acting ICE Director Tae Johnson said in a statement. "This operation highlights the tremendous efforts of our officers to apply an organized and methodical approach to the identification, location, and arrest of noncitizens who are national security, public safety, or border security threats."

Critics claim that the Biden administration’s priorities are too narrow and have led to a reduction in deportations and arrests of undocumented migrants that crossed the border. 

In Fiscal Year 2020, 103,603 undocumented migrants were arrested and 185,884 were deported. In FY 2019, ICE arrested 143,099 migrants and deported 267,258. 

In contrast, during FY 2021, ICE arrested 74,082 migrants and reported 59,011. Only 47,755 of those arrests and 28,677 of the deportations took place after the new priorities were implemented on February 18, 2021. 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, however, claimed that the reduction of arrests was a positive effect of the priorities. 

"We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior," Mayorkas told CBS News in an interview in January. "For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen's unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.