U.S. Border Patrol agents and officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States detained over 100 people, including several Indians, over the weekend for allegedly entering the country illegally. The arrests took place in two different crackdowns over five days.
Officials from the ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested 45 illegal immigrants in the Houston area for violating immigration laws during a five-day enforcement action, which ended on Aug. 10. Border Patrol agents, on the other hand, apprehended 78 foreigners who were found inside a locked refrigerated trailer in Texas on Aug. 11.
The ICE took to Twitter to announce the recent arrests made under its “enforcement and removal” operations.
ICE arrests 45 in Houston area during 5-day operation targeting criminal aliens, immigration fugitives https://t.co/yFUY07O1Wj pic.twitter.com/udQPKu0FbM
— ICE (@ICEgov) August 13, 2018
The individuals arrested during the operation included nationals from Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Cuba, Nigeria, India, Chile and Turkey, the ICE said in a statement.
“The local enforcement operation targeted at-large criminal aliens, many of whom had absconded from prior immigration proceedings,” the statement said, adding that among the individuals arrested during the operation, 15 persons had been deported and 42 persons had been convicted earlier. Several of them had been convicted for serious or violent criminal offenses, such as rape, child exploitation, robbery, drug trafficking and assault.
Some of the 45 individuals arrested during the operation will face federal criminal prosecution for illegal entry and illegal re-entry after deportation. The arrested persons who are not being federally prosecuted will be detained in ICE custody and administratively processed for removal from the United States, the agency said.
In a different operation, Border Patrol agents on Aug. 11 discovered 78 illegal foreigners inside a locked refrigerated trailer during a checking operation in Texas after a Border Patrol canine alerted to the presence of concealed humans and/or narcotics. The officials asked the driver to stop the vehicle but he tried to escape, only to be caught after some time on the same highway.
The immigrants detained in this action were identified as nationals of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, Ecuador, India and the Dominican Republic, according to a statement by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Though both the agencies have mentioned Indians among the immigrants arrested in the two crackdowns, the exact number of detainees from the country is not clear.
The number of Indian nationals trying to cross into the United States from Mexico has been on a rise in the last few years. So far this fiscal year, over 3,400 Indians have been caught by U.S. border security agents at the El Centro town of California, Fox News had reported earlier.
Several Indians are currently detained at various facilities of the United States over allegations of illegal entry. Dozens of Sikh asylum seekers, housed at the Sheridan Detention Center in Yamhill County, Oregon, recently filed a petition in a United States district court, asking the government to allow them to practice their religious rights in accordance with the First Amendment.
Among the 121 asylum seekers in the Sheridan FDC facility, 52 persons are Indians, who are mostly Sikh men from Punjab. They all were caught by the ICE for allegedly entering the United States illegally through Mexico.
Several other Indians, facing charges of illegal entry, are housed at federal detention facilities such as the Otero County Detention Center in New Mexico, Victorville Medium II in California, a federal correctional facility in Phoenix in Arizona, and a federal detention facility in Washington state, earlier reports said.