Immigration enforcement efforts lead to 244 arrests
Fifty-five people were arrested in Orange County last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as part of an operation in six Southern California counties targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
It is unclear where specifically in Orange County the arrestees were residing. However, Costa Mesa’s Lions Park was used as a staging area Wednesday for the operation, according to ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice.
Art Goddard, a Costa Mesa Historical Society volunteer, said that when he arrived at the Historical Society building in Lions Park at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, he saw about a dozen men and women in the parking lot wearing dark shirts with “ICE Police” emblazoned in white lettering.
After conferring with one another for about 20 minutes in the parking lot at 570 W. 18th St., the officers got in their cars and left in different directions, Goddard said in an interview last week.
Kice wrote in an email that “the park was not an arrest site.”
In total, ICE said, officers arrested 244 “individuals who pose a threat to public safety” in the four-day effort in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The operation targeted people with convictions for serious felonies such as child sex crimes and weapons and drug violations, as well as those with multiple misdemeanor convictions. The enforcement action began Aug. 23 and ended Thursday, ICE officials wrote in a statement.
The majority — 191 — of the people taken into custody are originally from Mexico. Overall, individuals from 21 countries, including Peru, Thailand, France and Ghana, were arrested.
Los Angeles County accounted for the largest number of arrests with 99, followed by Orange County with 55, San Bernardino County with 43, Riverside County with 24, Santa Barbara County with 20 and San Luis Obispo County with three, ICE officials said.
The foreign nationals detained who are not being criminally prosecuted will be processed administratively for deportation, ICE said
Those who have outstanding orders of removal or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported will be removed from the country immediately.
“This operation exemplifies ICE’s ongoing commitment to prioritizing convicted criminals and public safety threats for apprehension and removal,” said David Jennings, field office director for Enforcement and Removal Operations Los Angeles. “By taking these individuals off our streets and removing them from the country, we are making our communities safer for everyone.”