Nationwide Sweep Nabs 3,100 Fugitive Immigrants
The six-day operation highlights ICE's recent focus on those with serious criminal histories.
| Posted Monday, April 2, 2012, at 2:45 PM
Photo by Mark Ralstom/AFP/Getty Images.
Federal agents arrested more than 3,100 illegal immigrants who had previously been convicted of serious crimes or were otherwise seen as national security threats during a recent six-day nationwide sweep, the Obama administration announced Monday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the operation the "largest of its kind" and said it involved nearly 2,000 federal agents and included arrests in all 50 states, as well as a handful of U.S. territories.
The Associated Press reports that the sweep comes nearly a year after ICE vowed to focus its deportation efforts more on illegal immigrants with serious criminal histories and less on those who do not run afoul of non-immigration laws.
Roughly a third of the arrests were of immigrants with multiple convictions for crimes that included murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, terroristic threats, and sexual crimes against minors, according to the government.
