Who’s ready for some good news on Friday? Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is out on the streets and hard at work, actually getting the job they are paid to do accomplished. They just wrapped up an eleven day operation in New York designed to get criminal illegal aliens off the streets and out of the country, netting a haul of more than one hundred such suspects. The agency described the details in a recent press release.

An Ecuadorian citizen convicted of rape is among the 114 foreign nationals arrested during a recently concluded 11-day operation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers in New York targeting at-large criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants, and immigration fugitives. Of those arrested during the enforcement action which ended Saturday, 82 had criminal histories, including prior convictions for sex crimes, drug offenses, and fraud. 15 have pending criminal charges including assault, larceny and sexual exploitation of a minor. 37 individuals have final orders of removal. Nine of those arrested were released from local custody on an active detainer.

That flurry of successful arrests obviously hasn’t rid the Big Apple of all their criminal illegal aliens, but they clearly got some of the worst offenders. Perhaps even more importantly, it sends a message to the rest of them currently remaining in the shadows that the days of having the government simply ignore their existence and being able to move about the city with ease are coming to an end.

But the acting head of ICE has even more plans and they don’t all involve the illegal aliens. Just last week we talked about how Thomas Homan called out the “most un-American sanctuary cities” and put them on notice. He’s now revealing more details as to what may be awaiting them. For starters, he’s talking about arresting the leaders of those cities on charges of violating federal anti-smuggling laws.

The country’s top immigration enforcement officer says he is looking into charging sanctuary city leaders with violating federal anti-smuggling laws because he is fed up with local officials putting their communities and his officers at risk by releasing illegal immigrants from jail. Thomas Homan, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also told Americans to expect more work site enforcement targeting unscrupulous employers and more 287(g) agreements with willing police and sheriff’s departments that want to help get illegal immigrants off their streets. Eventually, he said, ICE will break the deportation records of 409,849 migrants set in 2012 under President Obama.

It’s of particular interest that Homan is predicting that he won’t be able to break the record for deportations this year, making sure to note that the current record holder is… Barack Obama.

I hadn’t thought of the anti-smuggling angle before, but it sounds as if it has merit. Of course, the theory may be long way from the reality if he actually tries it. Even in the “era of Trump” there’s going to be some major head explosions taking place if Homan actually shows up with handcuffs and tries to haul the mayors of San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles off to jail. Rather than anti-smuggling laws, I previously asked if these sanctuary city officials might not be charged under Title 8 U.S. Code § 1324 – Bringing in and harboring certain aliens. That one says that any person, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, is guilty of a felony. Refusing to allow ICE agents to access law enforcement databases in pursuit of suspects certainly sounds like “shielding from detection,” doesn’t it?

Good luck, Mr. Homan. You’ve got a tall hill to climb and too many people in our own government who don’t want you to succeed.