ICE Sweep in Los Angeles, Guess Where Most of the Immigrants Came From?
Earlier this week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that
“officers in the Los Angeles area arrested more than 240 criminals and individuals who pose a threat to public safety last week, a record number for a four-day ICE operation in the Southland. All 244 of the foreign nationals taken into custody . . . .had prior criminal convictions. The majority (56 percent) had criminal records that included felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and drug violations. The remaining arrestees had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors. . . . . While the vast majority of those taken into custody are originally from Mexico (191), a total of 21 countries are represented, including Peru, Thailand, France and Ghana. ” Here is a Los Angeles Times story on the sweep.
Although precise statistics are not available, the ICE press release makes it clear that the impact of the sweep fell most heavily on noncitizens from Mexico. Generally speaking, as blogged about previously, the efforts to remove “criminal aliens” falls most heavily on Latino immigrants in no small part because state and local law enforcement target minority communities for law enforcement scrutiny. As a result, about 96% of the immigrants removed from the country annually are from Mexico and Central America.
KJ