US Immigration Enforcement Officers Using Checkpoints/Traffic Stops And Dawn Raids To Get Hundreds Of Non-Registered Immigrants Arrested

Foreign nationals are being arrested in a targeted enforcement operation conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Los Angeles which started Feb. 7, 2017 and is set to continue for 5 days after Donald Trump Employed 10.000 more Immigration officials specifically for this task.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have arrested hundreds of people in a nationwide sweep in what they called a routine "enforcement surge."

According to officials cited by The Associated Press, the five-day operation was designed to round up undocumented immigrants who have criminal histories and pending deportation orders.

Hundreds of arrests from Atlanta to Chicago to New York, Los Angeles, North Carolina, and South Carolina drew backlash from several immigration advocacy groups. ICE officials arrested about 160 people in Southern California alone.

"This is not normal," said Angelica Salas, the Director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in a news conference on Friday. "We have responded to raids in the past and this is what sweeps ... large numbers of people picked up in a very short period of time, look like," she said.

Though attorneys and immigration advocates accused ICE agents of using traffic stops and checkpoints as part of the enforcement surge, the agency denied those allegations, citing agency officials who warned that the "rash of recent reports about purported ICE checkpoints and random sweeps are false, dangerous, and irresponsible."