U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested nearly 190 people across Southern California in a five-day operation that targeted “public safety threats,” including criminal foreign nationals, illegal re-entrants and immigration fugitives, authorities announced Thursday, May 25.

About 90 percent — 169 of the 188 people — arrested in the six-county sweep that ended Wednesday had prior criminal convictions, the agency said. Among them were 15 people convicted of sex crimes, including a convicted rapist, a previously deported cocaine trafficker and two people convicted of cruelty to a child.

“It’s a win for us, and now we’ve taken these convicted criminals off the streets so they can’t re-offend, they can’t make more victims and, ultimately, our goal is to remove them from the country,” David Marin, field office director for Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE in Los Angeles, said in an interview about the six-county sweep. “They weren’t people who just had traffic tickets or speeding violations.”

The convicted rapist, who was arrested in Los Angeles on Monday, was a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who was deported in 2013 after he served a nine-year prison term before returning illegally to the U.S., according to ICE. He now faces criminal prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for felony re-entry after deportation.

WHERE THE ARRESTS OCCURRED

Los Angeles County had the most arrests with 93, which included 25 people arrested in the San Fernando Valley and eight people arrested in Long Beach. One of those arrested in Long Beach was a 32-year-old Mexican national with convictions for child molestation who is a registered sex offender.

That was followed by Riverside County with 26, Orange County with 23, San Bernardino County with 21, Ventura County with 14 and Santa Barbara County with 11, according to ICE.

The vast majority of those arrested in the operation were from Mexico — 146 — but they also came from countries that included Russia, Armenia, Thailand, El Salvador, Vietnam, Cambodia and Guatemala, according to an ICE statement. Eleven women were among those arrested.

ICE has stepped up immigration arrests across the country. While most are convicted criminals, the sole offense of some has been that they are residing in the country illegally.

REACTION TO THE OPERATION

Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrants’ rights for the American Civil Liberties Union of California, said the ICE arrests included a decades-long green card holder from El Monte who, according to the man’s family, had a domestic violence-related conviction dating back to the early ’90s. She said ICE officials arrested him at his home Saturday after they presented themselves as police.

“His daughter is active-duty military, his son-in-law is active duty military,” Pasquarella said. “He’s been a valued member of his family and community for decades and they seem to be going after people for a conviction that’s as old as 1992.”

The man, a construction worker whom she declined to name without permission from his family, had not had previous contact with ICE officials, Pasquarella said. She said his green card had been renewed multiple times over the years and “the conviction has never been an issue” until apparently now.

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Here’s what you can do if your loved one is arrested by immigration officers “This is part of their, I think, public relations strategy to say they’re going after people with certain convictions, but of course it doesn’t tell the whole story of who these people are and the harm that is brought by targeting them and whether it’s really a sound choice,” Pasquarella said.

It was not known Thursday how many of those arrested in the operation may have been green-card holders, who are also subject to removal if convicted of certain crimes, Marin said. He said he could not comment specifically on the El Monte case but noted that people who violate their immigration status “have to be held responsible for that.”

Immigration judges, rather than ICE, are responsible for ordering someone’s deportation, but it’s ICE’s job to put those green-card holders who are subject to removal in front of such a judge, he said. Once the judge makes a decision, an appeal can be filed with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

ICE’s latest L.A.-area operation also netted 43 people with narcotics offenses, 27 with domestic violence crimes, 30 with DUI convictions, six with assault offenses, two cases of vehicle theft, and three cases of fraud, according to ICE.

ORANGE COUNTY ARRESTS

In Orange County, Santa Ana had the highest number of arrests: 11. They included a 30-year-old Mexican national who was picked up on May 20. He had an outstanding order to be deported from 2011 and prior convictions for spousal battery, inflicting corporal injury to a spouse and a probation violation that netted him a 387-day prison sentence, according to ICE officials.

Other Orange County arrests included a 45-year-old Salvadoran who was convicted in 2003 of assault using a semi-automatic weapon and discharging a firearm in a school zone, and a 60-year-old Mexican national with two prior felony drug convictions.

Marin said ICE does these types of expanded enforcement operations three to four times a year. They also did one in February that netted 161 arrests and “you can expect we’ll do a couple more this year,” he said.

CHANGING PRIORITIES

Under President Barack Obama’s administration, there were certain groups of people ICE could not arrest or target, Marin said. Now, under President Donald Trump’s administration, they are able to arrest anyone in violation of immigration law.

ICE’s enforcement priorities under Obama since 2014 included serious misdemeanors, such as domestic violence and driving under the influence, but did not necessarily include crimes such as theft or fraud unless they were sentenced to at least 90 days of custody for them.

At least eight people arrested in this week’s sweep face federal prosecution for re-entry after deportation, which is a felony and is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, ICE officials said in the statement.

From January 20 through April 29, ICE arrested more than 41,800 people across the country who are known or suspected of being in the country illegally. That’s up 35 percent over the same period in 2016, according to data provided by the agency.

Staff writers Roxana Kopetman and Larry Altman contributed to this report.