In a two-day operation ending March 30, ICE Fugitive Operations Team agents arrested 28 immigrants in Liberal, Kansas. Those arrested were 23 men and five women. Twenty of them were from Guatemala, six were from Mexico, and two were from El Salvador. Four of the 28 had criminal convictions; 18 had prior orders of deportation. All those arrested have been placed in deportation proceedings. Officers from the Liberal Police Department provided leads and otherwise assisted ICE during the operation. (ICE news release, April 4)

In a two-day operation ending March 27, ICE Fugitive Operations Teams arrested 18 men and seven women in Grand Island, Nebraska, and surrounding communities. Out of the total 25 people arrested, 15 are from Guatemala, eight are from Mexico, one is from El Salvador and one is from Iran. Nineteen of the 25 were "fugitives" who had failed to comply with earlier deportation orders; ICE described the other six as "immigration violators encountered by ICE officers during their targeted arrests." Five of the 25 had criminal convictions. (ICE news release, March 28)

In a four-day sweep ending Feb. 25, ICE agents arrested 225 immigrants in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New York, Wisconsin and Missouri. The individuals arrested had outstanding deportation orders to 12 countries including Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, India and Poland. Thirty of the arrests took place in the Chicago area. (AP, Feb. 26, 27; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 27)

ICE has 75 Fugitive Operations Teams deployed across the country. Congress has authorized ICE to add 29 more Fugitive Operations Teams in fiscal year 2008. According to ICE, the success of its Fugitive Operations Teams can be partly attributed to the new Fugitive Operations Support Center (FOSC) in Vermont, which aids in gathering and analyzing information on fugitive cases across the country. Since opening in 2007, this center has since provided ICE agents with more than 150,000 case leads. (ICE news release, April 4)

From Immigration News Briefs, April 11

See our last post on the politics of immigration.