ICE arrests nearly 500 immigrants in raids on “sanctuary cities” across US
By
Evan Blake
30 September 2017
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency announced Thursday that it carried out a sweeping, nationwide crackdown on immigrants living in so-called “sanctuary cities.” The campaign, dubbed “Operation Safe City,” involved the arrests of 498 individuals over a four-day period ending Wednesday.
Major metropolitan areas across the US were targeted in the latest ICE raids, including Los Angeles County (167 arrests), Philadelphia (107), Denver (63), New York (45), Seattle (33), Baltimore (28), Cook County, Illinois (30), San Jose (27), Washington, D.C. (14) as well as the entire state of Massachusetts (50).
The immigrants abducted in these raids represent a broad swath of the world’s population, coming from 42 countries.
In their press release, ICE details ten sensationalized stories of the crimes for which some of these immigrants have been accused. They then claim that 317 of those detained had prior criminal convictions, implying that 181 had no criminal record whatsoever. The most common offense cited by ICE was drunk driving, for which 86 of the undocumented immigrants have been detained and face deportation.
Any crimes they may have committed are a product of the diseased social relations of capitalism and can largely be attributed to the impacts of poverty and desperation that have driven them to leave their home countries to come to the US, where they face ostracism and demonization by the government and media.
The ICE press release states, “Operation ‘Safe City’ focused on cities and regions where ICE deportation officers are denied access to jails and prisons to interview suspected immigration violators or jurisdictions where…