Hundreds of fugitive immigrants arrested in federal crackdown

Posted on Sat, May. 01, 2010
Hundreds of fugitive immigrants arrested in federal crackdown
BY ALFONSO CHARDY

achardy@MiamiHerald.com


In the pre-dawn darkness Wednesday, a small party of federal agents gathered in the parking lot of a strip mall at the corner of Northwest 67th Avenue and the Palmetto Expressway.
They strapped on bullet-proof vests with the legend POLICE ICE on the front and back. Then, they discussed plans to pick up their ``targets,'' fugitive foreign nationals convicted of crimes and marked for deportation.

As dawn lit the sky, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers climbed aboard five vehicles and drove in a convoy to the homes of two ``targets,'' residents of separate apartment complexes in Miami Gardens. Though neither man was found, other federal officers elsewhere around the country and in Puerto Rico detained 596 foreign-born fugitive criminal convicts in a vast sweep as part of Operation Cross Check.

Three other foreign nationals arrested had no criminal convictions, but were not simply undocumented immigrants. One was wanted for murder for hire in Orange County, Florida, and the other two had been previously deported and had returned.

Of the 599 people arrested, 544 are men and 55 are women. They are from 60 countries in Latin America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Arrests in Florida and Puerto Rico accounted for the largest number of detentions during the operation with a total of 258 taken into custody, ICE officials said. Arrests in Florida included 48 in Miami-Dade, 24 in Broward, 11 in West Palm Beach and five in Monroe.

The majority of those arrested in Florida and Puerto Rico were from Mexico (63) followed by Jamaica (29), Honduras (28), Dominican Republic (18), Colombia (16) and Guatemala (14).

One of the South Florida detainees identified by ICE is José Oscar Avalo-Molina of El Salvador, detained Wednesday in Pembroke Park. Avalo-Molina, whose convictions include first-degree murder, was deported in 1997 but had returned.

Cross Check was one of the largest sweeps of foreign criminal convicts since ICE was created in 2003 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Two previous similar operations that netted an average of more than 200 arrests each occurred in Texas in February and California in September.

John Morton, assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said at a Washington, D.C. news conference Friday that the vast majority of the detainees were fugitives, have criminal convictions and final orders of deportation.

In some cases, some had been previously deported and had illegally reentered the country. They included criminals convicted of serious crimes including murder, assault, sex offenses, drug trafficking, alien smuggling, burglary and theft.

``It was an extremely successful operation,'' said Morton. ``The most successful that we've had to date.''

ICE operations in which foreign nationals are detained for deportation have become increasingly controversial among immigrant rights groups frustrated with President Barack Obama's failure to push immigration reform as a national priority.

Obama on Wednesday signaled a possible decision to withdraw immigration reform from the national agenda of priorities saying there ``may not be an appetite'' in Congress this year for legalization of undocumented immigrants.

Immigrant rights activists have focused their objections on what they say is growing collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement in identifying and detaining foreign nationals, and that in the sweeps for criminals, noncriminal undocumented immigrants also get picked up.

ICE officials insisted that all the detainees were criminal convicts and that their focus remains the detention and deportation of dangerous foreign-born criminals.

During the early morning operation Wednesday in Miami Gardens, local police did not participate directly in arrest efforts.

Federal officers did call Miami Gardens police just before they moved in on the first target and asked that the department send a uniformed officer.

The idea was not to seek assistance for the arrest but to reassure local residents that the operation was legitimate since local police were present.





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