82 people, from as many as 26 different nations, have been arrested by officers with the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during an operation focused on the District of Columbia and Virginia, which ran from 26 to 30 March.
Of the 82 people, 68 had prior criminal convictions for offenses such as larceny, drug distribution, and armed robbery. Of the other 14, two had been given final outstanding orders of removal, two were facing pending local charges, two were linked to the street gang MS-13, three had overstayed their US visas, one was a human rights violator, and one was wanted by a law enforcement agency in another country. The remaining four were undocumented immigrants.
The Washington Field Office director of Enforcement and Removals Operations, Yvonne Evans, says that immigration enforcement operations aimed at criminal aliens are regularly conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She added that the most recent operation had succeeded in its goal of removing from the community immigration violators who also had a wide range of criminal convictions, including grand larceny, and drunk driving.
The undocumented criminal immigrants taken into custody during the five-day operation included nationals and citizens from countries such as Algeria, China, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Moldova, New Zealand, Peru, Somalia, Sudan, and Vietnam. Those with outstanding orders of deportation, or who have already been deported from the country and illegally returned can be immediately removed from the US.