(Foreign nationals are arrested during a targeted enforcement operation conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Los Angeles, Feb. 7, 2017.Charles Reed/US Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have arrested hundreds of people in a nationwide sweep in what they called a routine "enforcement surge."
The moves, however, were seen by immigration advocates as a consequence of President Donald Trump's recent executive orders on immigration.
According to officials cited by The Associated Press, the five-day operation was designed to round up undocumented immigrants who have criminal histories and pending deportation orders.
Hundreds of arrests - from Atlanta to Chicago to New York, Los Angeles, North Carolina, and South Carolina - drew backlash from several immigration advocacy groups. ICE officials arrested about 160 people in Southern California alone.
"This is not normal," said Angelica Salas, the Director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in a news conference on Friday. "We have responded to raids in the past and this is what sweeps ... large numbers of people picked up in a very short period of time, look like," she said.
Though attorneys and immigration advocates accused ICE agents of using traffic stops and checkpoints as part of the enforcement surge, the agency denied those allegations, The Associated Press said, citing agency officials who warned that the "rash of recent reports about purported ICE checkpoints and random sweeps are false, dangerous, and irresponsible."
(Immigrant rights' advocates and others join others protesting President Donald Trump's immigration order at Castle Clinton National Monument in New York's Battery Park.AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
According to an unnamed Department of Homeland Security official cited by The Washington Post, civilians who lacked documentation, but had no criminal history were also rounded up alongside people known by the agency to have criminal records - a result of Trump's recently expanded immigration rules.
"Big cities tend to have a lot of illegal immigrants," the DHS official said. "They're going to a target-rich environment."
"We cannot understate the level of panic and terror that is running through many immigrant communities," said Walter Barrientos, a member of the nonprofit organization Make the Road New York.
Barrientos said ICE agents were "not just detaining individuals they are looking for ... but in fact, taking anyone else in the community, or in these homes who does not have immigration status at the moment, or who is not able to prove citizenship."
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