Immigration officials describe ‘routine’ raids and arrests planned under Obama, but attorneys and activists say circumstances on the ground remain unclear

Federal officers detained more than 160 people in raids around the Los Angeles area this week, raising fears in immigrant communities around the country as parallel operations swept up scores more around the country.

On Friday, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials confirmed five-day “surge operations” in south-eastern states and southern California, saying that the majority of the people arrested were men with prior criminal convictions. Officials described the raids as “routine” and said they would have final statistics about how many people were arrested on Monday.

David Marin, the field office director for Ice in Los Angeles, said the operation was planned before Barack Obama left office, and that the majority of the people arrested had felony convictions. He conceded that some of the people were detained during the raids because they did not have immigration papers, but pushed back against reports that Ice officials had barred attorneys from detained migrants.



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“If there were circumstances where this really did occur, we will look into it and do whatever is necessary to rectify the situation,” Marin said. He compared the raids to operations during the Obama administration, for instance when more than 200 were arrested over four days in 2015, and more than 100 over four days last year.

Raids and mass detentions were tools that Obama frequently reached for from 2009 to 2017, and he deported at least 2.4 million people, more than any previous president. But the first operations of Donald Trump’s presidency fanned fears around the country that his promised plan to deport millions of undocumented people had begun.

Rumors quickly spread about raids, angering Marin, who said the stories endangered migrants and officers. “Reports about purported Ice checkpoints and random sweeps are false, dangerous, and irresponsible. These reports create panic.”

Attorneys and activists said they had heard a great deal of panic from immigrants, and that circumstances were extremely unclear on the ground. “It’s all kind of swirly right now,” said Robert Painter, executive director at American Gateways, an Austin-based legal advocacy firm.

“We’ve been hearing accounts for the past couple days about Ice officers popping up at different points, Taco Bells and grocery store parking lots, wearing plain clothes and driving unmarked cars, but this is unverified, coming from clients and attorneys.

“There’s certainly something going on, but I can’t speak to the scope of the action.”

Painter said that one of the many unknown details is whether Ice is still prioritizing people with exit orders and criminal histories, or whether the agency has expanded the net of people targeted for deportation. “This is the largest action I’ve seen in three years I’ve been working in Austin,” he said. “It feels different than anything I’ve seen.”

It’s all kind of swirly right now. We’ve been hearing about Ice officers popping up at Taco Bells and grocery stores Robert Painter, American Gateways

He said that worried calls had inundated his office, but that all attorneys could do at the moment was remind clients of their constitutional rights and “get them thinking about safety plans, access to documents, who’s going to take care of the children”.

Similarly, Bob Libal, executive director of the advocacy group Grassroots Leadership, said the organisation had received a barrage of calls in past 24 hours. He estimated at least 25 people had been arrested, and said it was unclear where the arrestees had been taken.

“This certainly seems like retaliation against a community that has stood up to for its immigrant members,” Libal said, suggesting the raids were deliberately focused on Austin due to its “sanctuary” status, an informal category of cities with lenient policies toward migrant. Trump signed executive orders last month threatening such cities, which include Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, over the policies.

In Los Angeles, Angelica Salas, the executive director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Chira), warned that the raids were a sign of future anti-immigrant campaigns. “This is what sweeps, or coordinated actions, look like,” she told reporters.

In a statement, she directly blamed the president, saying, “these sweeps are directly linked to President Trump’s ‘new normal’ where criminalizing and dehumanizing immigrants is convenient to violate their due process and facilitate their deportation.”

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Salas called for Ice to detail the convictions history of the people detained, and to stop its operations. “For Ice, the arrest, detention, and deportation of more than 160 members of our community is business as usual,” she said. “It is not for us and we will fight tooth and nail to stop them.”

In a conference call with reporters on Friday, advocates from three groups estimated that hundreds of people had been detained, and that some had been deported.

“We cannot understate the level of panic and terror that is running through many immigrant communities,” said Walter Barrientos, a spokesman for Make the Road New York. Barrientos said that in some cases Ice officials had detained people who do not have criminal records or who could not prove citizenship.

The activists said that they had heard reports of other raids in major cities in Texas, Virginia, North Carolina – such as Dallas, Alexandria and Charlotte – as well as counties with large immigrant populations in Florida, New York and other states.