ICE arrested only 35 migrants in Trump-announced immigration sweep targeting thousands of people
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced on Tuesday that only 35 people were arrested in an immigration sweep that President Donald Trump announced just over a month ago.
- The figures -first reported by The New York Times - fell far short of the 2,000 people ICE was aiming to arrest and deport, which Trump insisted last week were "very successful."
- In a call with reporters, acting director Matthew Albence acknowledged that the wide publicity the operation received beforehand likely affected the outcome of their operation, which is ongoing.
- After Trump announced the mass immigration sweep on Twitter in June, immigration advocates and civil liberties groups canvassed immigrant neighborhoods and waged social media campaigns to inform migrants of their rights.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced on Tuesday that only 35 people were arrested in an immigration sweep that President Donald Trump announced just over a month ago.
Labeled Operation Border Resolve, the sweep targeted families with court-ordered removals. But the figures -first reported by The New York Times - fell far short of the 2,000 people ICE was aiming to arrest and deport, which Trump insisted last week were "very successful."
In a call with reporters, acting director Matthew Albence said acknowledged that the wide publicity the operation received beforehand likely affected the outcome of their operation, which is ongoing.
"There were advocates, there were people in Congress sitting here giving instructions to people illegally in the country and telling them how to avoid detection," Albence said in remarks reported by the Los Angeles Times. "There's no way for us to quantify what impact that had, but you couldn't turn on any TV station anywhere in this country for several weeks without this being one of the lead topics."
Of the dozens arrested, 17 were family members who crossed the border together and 18 were so-called collateral arrests, meaning they were not targeted but were present at an arrest.
Those targeted in the sweep were part of an accelerated docket where they could present their case before an immigration judge. But the vast majority didn't show up to their first hearing and were ordered removed in absentia.
Since mid-May, ICE has arrested 934 migrants.
Read more: A Tennessee community stopped a father's ICE arrest by forming a human chain around his home
Trump announced the operation on Twitter in mid-June, claiming that "million of illegal aliens" were going to be removed by ICE. It was expected to take place in some of the nation's largest cities including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Denver, and Houston.
Trump reversed himself five days later and announced a delay to the immigration raids at the request of Democrats to see if both sides could "get together to work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border."
While Democrats and Republicans tried negotiating a solution to the record amount of migrant families on the southern border, immigration advocates and civil liberties groups mobilized around the country. They waged social media campaigns to inform migrants of their rights if ICE approached them, canvassed immigrant neighborhoods, and handed out flyers.
Immigration experts, however, said the raids only served to spread fear in immigrant communities and would do little to address the problems weighing down on the American immigration system.
The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, published a notice on the Federal Register on Monday that applies "expedited removal" to undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have been continuously in the country for two years or more, increasing it from a previous 14-day cutoff.