News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Nov. 8, 2019: Several Caribbean immigrants were recently nabbed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Massachusetts and New York.
Many were considered “criminal immigrants” who had been released from local law enforcement custody with no notification to ICE and were convicted or charged with fentanyl, heroin, and other drug-related trafficking crimes.
They included a Dominican national in Lowell, MA who has pending charges for trafficking cocaine and false identity. He had been removed from the country in 2018 but illegally reentered and had been charged in federal court with reentry after deportation, a federal felony which carries a maximum prison term of up to 20 years. He is currently in U.S. Marshals Service custody.
Nine Caribbean immigrants in total were nabbed in Massachusetts including five other Dominicans, two Haitians and one Bahamian.
In NY, ICE agents arrested a total of 23 sexual predators during a six-day period in an enforcement effort dubbed “Operation SOAR” (Sex Offender Alien Removal). Among them was a 52-year-old Jamaican national, who was nabbed in Uniondale, Long Island, NY. He has a prior federal conviction for receiving material involving the sexual exploitation of a minor for which a sentence of 120 months imprisonment was imposed.
The other Caribbean national nabbed was a 23-year-old Dominican national in Brooklyn, NY. He was previously convicted of rape in the second degree, intercourse with person less than 15 years old and acting in manner to injure a child victim less than 17 years old.
ICE did not give a breakdown of how many immigrants nabbed were from the Caribbean during its NY raid.
Deportations and roundups have become a major part of the Donald Trump anti-immigration agenda. Between August and September of this year alone, ICE removed more than 2,500 family members. The removals are just shy of the 2,711 family members removed in all of fiscal year 2018.
And in Trump’s first year in office, ICE arrested 109,000 criminals and 46,000 people without criminal records – a stunning 171 percent increase in the number of non-criminal individuals arrested over 2016.
