Chicago As they got ready to approach what they referred to as their target, a number of Customs Enforcement and Immigration officers, together with other federal employees, waited in unmarked vehicles.
Christopher Fragoso Lara, 25, of Mexico, was convicted of a number of offenses, including possession of a firearm, domestic battery, aggravated battery, and home invasion, according to ICE. He had been seen by a surveillance crew at his place of employment, a tire store in Chicago, on Monday morning.
As Fragoso Lara was speaking to a customer outdoors in below-freezing weather, agents blocked off the street outside the establishment and took him into custody.
When NBC News was infiltrated with the agents during operations across the Chicago area on Monday morning, the arrest happened without any problems. Before dawn, the law enforcement officers left downtown Chicago and headed to the Berwyn neighborhood, which is located on the outskirts of the city.
Three door-knocking operations showed the time and effort required for the operations, but they did not lead to any arrests. Every entrance and exit was covered by a minimum of seven officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and ICE at each location.
According to a person acquainted with the activities, ten groups of roughly ten federal agents each dispersed throughout the city on Monday. The activities took place during President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaigns in several cities around the nation.
Over the past week, the Trump administration has made an effort to show the world that it is keeping its word to carry out large deportations as soon as it took office.Before they doubled on Friday, last week’s arrest totals were comparable to those from September, the most recent month for which statistics were available.
Data first acquired by NBC News shows that 1,179 people were apprehended by ICE on Sunday. The number is the highest under the current administration and surpasses the 956 arrests the agency reported on Sunday night.
Peter Sodini of Chicago was present when Fragoso Lara was taken into custody. He gave the ICE officers his thanks.
“I don’t mind an immigrant, but if they’re breaking our laws, they don’t need to be here,” he stated.
Fragoso Lara was then brought to an ICE processing center outside of Chicago, where inmates are fingerprinted, photographed, and detained until their deportation flights, which usually happen on Fridays.
He claimed to have grown up in the US and that he would leave his 5-year-old daughter in the US if he were deported so she could live a better life.
I’m not with her. Fragoso Lara stated that she was raised without a father and that he would advise Trump to give her another chance. I’m not old yet. I did make bad choices, but I’ve matured and come to terms with the way things are.
On Monday afternoon, the facility was processing or holding 25 men and one woman. They are only expected to stay for a maximum of twelve hours.
The processing center has been very busy during the last week, according to Frank Padula, assistant field office director.
We never stop,” he declared. “As you can see, there are many men processing here as well as waiting to be processed in the holding cells.
ICE failed to locate and apprehend its targets on Monday, however certain operations, like as the one to apprehend Fragoso Lara, were successful.
When ICE officers and others knocked on a door earlier in the day, nobody answered. They then talked to their target’s parents at a second stop, who said they had lost contact with their son. The cops proceeded to another place without seeming to inquire about the couple’s immigration status.
There has been worry that law-abiding migrants with other types of lawful immigration status may also be picked up, a practice known as collateral arrests, despite the Trump administration’s claims that the crackdown is directed at criminals.
Sam Olson, the director of enforcement and removal operations in the Chicago field office, responded that collateral arrests were conceivable when asked about them. Enforcing the immigration laws is our responsibility,” he stated. “There is a chance that someone could be detained if they are in the country illegally, regardless of whether they have committed any crimes.
The number of migrants apprehended, both those with and without criminal records, has not always been made public by officials.
However, according to a senior Trump administration official, only 613 of the 1,179 people arrested on Sunday—nearly 52%—were deemed to be criminal arrests. The others seem to be either nonviolent criminals or those who have never committed a crime.
Being undocumented is not a criminal, but rather a civil offense. However, it is illegal for an undocumented immigrant who has already been deported to return to the United States without authorization.
Administration officials emphasized that cops had detained numerous violent gang members since Trump took office, including scores of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in Colorado. Nevertheless, at least 566 individuals who were taken into custody on Sunday did not have any criminal records and were simply held because they did not have the proper documentation to be in the country.
According to Olson, Trump has adopted a whole-of-government strategy in which numerous agencies are working together to make arrests, whereas ICE tries to make arrests on a daily basis.