President Donald Trump on Sunday praised the actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for the recent "enforcement surge" that officials say is targeting immigrants who are in the country illegally and have criminal records.
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Trump said on Twitter that "the crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!"
That contrasts with comments from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which said the efforts were "routine" and no different from the targeted arrests carried out under former President Barack Obama.
Advocacy groups contend the government has rounded large numbers of people as part of stepped-up enforcement, while ICE calls the effort no different from enforcement actions carried out in the past.
Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller said on NBC’s Meet the Press that the emphasis is on deporting those he calls "criminal aliens" and who "pose a threat to public safety."
"We’re going to focus on public safety and saving American lives and we will not apologize," Miller said.
Among those arrested were a Salvadoran gang member wanted in his home country and a Brazilian drug trafficker, officials said.
Nearly 200 people were arrested in the Carolinas and Georgia. More than 150 more were rounded up in and around Los Angeles, and around 40 were arrested in New York City and surrounding areas, ICE confirmed.
A decade ago, immigration officers searching for specific individuals would often arrest others encountered along the way, a practice that drew criticism from advocates. Under the Obama administration, agents focused more narrowly on specific individuals. ICE now appears to be reverting to old policies.
Immigrant rights groups cite the case of Manuel Mosqueda, a 50-year-old house painter, as an example of how they believe ICE agents in the new administration are going too far.
During last week’s enforcement operation, ICE agents showed up at Mosqueda’s home looking for someone else. While there, they inquired about Mosqueda, learned he was here illegally and put him on a bus to Mexico.
Karla Navarrete, a lawyer for the advocacy group CHIRLA, said she sought to stop Mosqueda from being placed on the bus and was told by ICE that things had changed. She said another lawyer filed federal court papers and got a judge to stop the deportation. The bus turned around, and Mosqueda is now jailed in Southern California, waiting to learn his fate.
For supporters of Trump’s immigration policies, the new and broader approach was welcome news.
"The main thing is to send the message that the immigration laws are actually being enforced again. That in itself is an important message that’s got to be sent," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for tighter controls on immigration.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said the agency is simply enforcing federal law.
But immigration advocates said many immigrants are afraid to send their children to school and afraid to go to church or work or the hospital.
Panicked rumors spread as quickly as the truth.
"Every time so much as a white guy with a clipboard is walking around, everyone runs into their apartments and locks the doors," he said.
Advocates and immigration attorneys across the country scrambled to hold seminars and conference calls teaching people their rights.
At his Sunday morning service, Pastor Fred Morris, whose United Methodist mission is in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Los Angeles, looked out over his congregation as news ricocheted around the world that American authorities were rounding up immigrants in an enforcement surge that the president promised on the campaign trail.
"There is a dreadful sense of fear. It’s more than palpable. It’s radiating. People are terrified," Morris said. He handed out a double-sided sheet listing congregants’ civil rights. The first read "don’t open your door." He is planning a community meeting tonight with lawyers, immigration advocates and consuls from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Morris has also started organizing a phone chain. If he hears about a raid on a home in his community, he will call five people, who will call five people and so on. They will all show up, stand on the sidewalk and chant: "ICE go home." He hopes "public shaming" will prove to be a deterrent.
"The only weapon we have is solidarity," he said. "They are deporting people who may be undocumented, but they do have rights under our laws."
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