US Puts 121 Illegal Immigrants Into Custody For Deportation
KABUL: (MEP) US authorities took 121 people into custody over the weekend as part of efforts to deport Central American families who had immigrated to the United States illegally, primarily in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, officials said on Monday.
The so-called removals of adults and children followed an increased rate of deportation of single adults to Central America since the summer of 2014, the Department of Homeland Security said.
“This should come as no surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement.
The large-scale campaign is carried out by agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal law enforcement agency under the DHS.
American officials are keen to avoid a repeat of the surge in unaccompanied children entering the United States in 2014, when tens of thousands of minors traveling without adults flooded across the southern U.S. border illegally.
The White House on Monday declined to comment on specifics of the weekend apprehensions by the American immigration authorities.
“The enforcement priorities laid out by the administration are concentrating our efforts to deport felons, not families, and to prioritize the case of recent border crossers,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing.
The targeted adults and children had been ordered to be removed by an immigration court and exhausted legal remedies and asylum claims.
The majority of the families will be taken to family residential centers before they fly back to their home countries.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned the actions and said the deportation policies were rigged against families. “These raids are a scare tactic to deter other families fleeing violence in Central America from coming to the United States,” Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU’s immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.
Obama administration officials said in late December that they would step up deportations of those who had already been ordered to leave the country.
