(The Center Square) – U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement officers in Miami, working with multiple Florida law enforcement agencies, arrested nearly 800 illegal foreign nationals.
“In a first-of-its-kind partnership between state and federal partners, ICE Miami and Florida law enforcement arrested nearly 800 illegal aliens this week during the first four days of #OperationTidalWave – a massive, multi-agency, immigration enforcement crackdown,” it said.
Among those arrested were “a Colombian murderer, alleged MS-13 and 18th Street gang members and a Russian with a red notice for manslaughter,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a White House press briefing Monday morning.
Florida is the only state in the country where all state and local law enforcement agencies in all Florida counties are participating in ICE’s 287g program. This includes the Florida Department of Law Enforcement state troopers, sheriff’s offices and police departments in all 67 Florida counties.
“I think the main reason why this operation is significant is because it’s the first of its kind,” Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told ABC News. “It’s one that not only we’ve been doing what we have, but we have surged all our federal partners together along with Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement [and] Removal Operations, which are all the enforcement arms of ICE, but we’re also using all our 287(g) partners in the state of Florida. We’re using state, local and county law enforcement agencies to assist us in our operations.”
Of the nearly 800 arrested, Florida law enforcement officials were involved with 275 arrests of illegal foreign nationals who already had final orders of removal from a federal immigration judge and hadn’t been removed from the country.
In response to the operation, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “Florida is leading the nation in active cooperation with the Trump administration for immigration enforcement and deportation operations!”
“State troopers, local police officers, county sheriffs – they’re our eyes and ears,” Lyons said. “They encountered these criminal aliens out and about during their regular duties, and they’re able to go ahead and identify those public safety threats for us.”
The Trump administration has been prioritizing the most dangerous criminals for removal first, The Center Square reported.
Previous ICE arrests in Florida were of a Cuban intelligence officer and violent foreign nationals previously deported multiple times. They include men from the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico who’d been arrested for human smuggling, convicted for violent crimes and previously served prison time, The Center Square reported.
ICE agents also arrested alleged Chinese spies, human smugglers and violent criminals, including a Chinese-Canadian national charged with three counts of using an unmanned aircraft to photograph defense installations and equipment at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations agents are also disrupting maritime smuggling events, arresting illegal foreign nationals from China, Ecuador, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
In another multi-agency operation in Palm Beach County, ICE and Border Patrol agents arrested illegal foreign nationals with convictions for a range of crimes. Their convictions included drug possession, prostitution, illegal re-entry, resisting an officer, robbery, probation violation, fraud (illegal use of a credit card), larceny, cocaine possession, driving under the influence and possession of stolen property. Those arrested and processed for removal were citizens of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela – all living in the U.S. illegally, The Center Square reported.
