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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested two people in Mountain View as part of a Bay Area sweep focused in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties earlier this week.
ICE officials declined to identify the individuals arrested in Mountain View. One had a prior sex offense conviction and the other had no previous criminal convictions, Schwab said. Current department policy prohibits immigration officials from providing additional specific information on anyone who was arrested, Schwab said.
A total of 27 people were reportedly arrested in the two counties. ICE officials said 23 of those arrested had previous criminal convictions for offenses such as driving under the influence, drug trafficking and assault.
ICE spokesman James Schwab said the operation targeted San Francisco and Santa Clara County because they are so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that do not honor ICE detainers or allow ICE agents to enter jails to interview suspected immigration violators. Mountain View officials have not formally declared it a sanctuary city, but its law-enforcement policies bar officers from facilitating any ICE operations in the area.
Detainers are requests by ICE to local authorities to hold a person in custody for an additional two days after the release date from jail.
The operation, known as Bay Area Safe City, was carried out by agents of ICE’s San Francisco field office, whose territory stretches from Bakersfield to the Oregon border.
The home countries of those arrested are Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, Schwab said. He said that arrestees who have pending orders for deportation or who entered the United States illegally after being deported are subject to immediate removal.
Some others who are accused of other types of immigration violations are in custody but will be given hearings before an immigration judge, Schwab said.
People with active status in the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program were not targeted, ICE said.
A spokeswoman for the Mountain View Police told the Voice that ICE agents informed local law enforcement earlier this week that they were conducting an operation in the city.
“ICE’s goal is to build cooperative, respectful relationships with our law enforcement partners to help prevent dangerous criminal aliens from being released back onto the streets,” ICE Acting Director Tom Homan said in a statement from Washington, D.C.
Bay City News Service contributed to this report.
Trump is sticking to the liberal cities and poor communities. Meanwhile, all White House officials caught in the latest email scandal will probably get pardons, if there is any prosecution at all.
Good. Out out out!
@resident:
“Trump is sticking to the liberal cities and poor communities.”
No. Those cities were targeted because they don’t cooperate with ICE on arrests, so ICE needs to go after them directly. If the cities won’t cooperate, AND people will gravitate to those cities to avoid deportation, it is obvious that is where the ICE will go.
If you aren’t going to hold the people ICE wants that means ICE will have to go get them.
See how that works?
Or do you think being a sanctuary city means no immigration laws are enforced?
So the Trump Administration has invaded and disrupted our communities, while it continues to have trouble finding the resources to assist the people of Puerto Rico. Trump is having difficulty recognizing what the real threats are to the health and safety of Americans. Indeed, there seems to be a pattern of hostility to people whose dominant language is Spanish.
Unless we find a way to resist, La Migra will be back, more aggressive, in greater numbers.
well california sounds like an illegal state if they hide criminals…..ICE needs to go after themk and send them back to where they came from…….they are all scum
wonder if Lenny Siegel is illegal?
It’s about time there is some enforcement of this law. Keep it going…..
@Lenny Siegel nice strawman attack, and please enough of the ‘disrupting our communities’ nonesense. If one is in this country illegally it means that one has broken the laws of this country. That is just not debatable. Either we are a country of laws or we are not. Selectively enforcing the laws we like and not enforcing the ones we don’t only weakens our democracy.
Quite honestly I don’t see why that is so hard to comprehend. The excuse that illegal aliens are only breaking the law to better their lives rings hollows as Tens of thousands of people queue up and follow the legal process to be admitted into this country everyday.
It is an insult to them and to the rest of us legal immigrants who spent many years before being granted the privilege of living in the United States that those who willingly break this country’s laws are granted the benefits of living in this country.
The fact that American politicians defend the actions of these people is absolutely appalling and shameful.
I love seeing families being taken back to their scum countries…..I do not want criminals here…..not only do they break the law by being here illegally, but they come here and break laws….KILL…RAPE….ROB….they are actually animals most of them….anyone who thinks this is ok needs to get their head examined. after all liberalism is a mental dis-order, right?
Twenty seven people. There are about 11 million people left cleaning your homes, gardens, cooking/washing, working as nannies, handy-men and women, planting, harvesting food etc. According to Pew Research, not all are from Mexico. Read up on why they flee their countries! Many parts of Central America are riddled with extreme violence. Many don’t have time to wait: it’s flight or fight and die.
To the poster who said, “Go back.” Why don’t you, Icy Ice, go back to where you came from, unless you’re an Ohlone-Miwok native.
Two of my wealthy clients have garden and house-cleaning services. I asked if they know if their helpers are legal and documented? They don’t know, they never asked for documentation. One client said today, she is so happy she does not have to clean her gigantic house.
The problem is our demand for cheap labor. The problem is not imposing Human Rights. The problem is our drug addiction, allowing our neighbors in the south to fuel our habit. Don’t blame the Mexican.
“The excuse that illegal aliens are only breaking the law to better their lives rings hollows as Tens of thousands of people queue up and follow the legal process to be admitted into this country everyday.”
And as millions are left to languish in our overcrowded prisons, in far too many cases because poverty and lack of opportunity brought them there. It does not have to be this way. In countries that put their citizens first, with good schools and jobs that pay a living wage, there is far less crime and wasted lives.
@ORR, yes, your wealthy client needs cheap labor to clean their house and the garden, but they are paying the service. Who is making the profit form these cheap labor, if these service are organized and provided by some kind of agent company? I guess they are the ones don’t want the ICE to enforce the law and take out the foundation of their lucrative business.
Good news
@Lenny – I am extremely disappointed by the tone of your comments. I would like to know how enforcing the law is ‘invading and disrupting our communities’? What are your sources for the claim that the Administration ‘continues to have trouble finding the resources to assist the people of Puerto Rico’? Good grief! It has ONLY been 2 weeks (1 when you wrote your comment) and everything is supposed to already be fixed after the island has been hit by not just one, but TWO hurricanes back to back? In my opinion, it is ridiculous to expect everything to be fixed overnight after a CAT 4 hurricane. Especially on an island that had extreme infrastructure issues to begin with! ( http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/353506-puerto-rico-was-a-disaster-long-before-maria-ravaged-the-island )
I have never before heard of a case where FEMA had actually pre-staged many of the materials that would be needed to respond to a hurricane before the hurricane even hit! That was very foresighted on the part of the Administration and counters the ridiculous and inflammatory claim that ‘there seems to be a pattern of hostility to people whose dominant language is Spanish’. Where is the proof? There is proof that there is a pattern of hostility towards supporters of the President and/or conservatives in general right here in the Bay Area, yet no one on the Council has said a single word about that!
Also, what exactly is it that you are asking us to resist? Immigration law? The police? The Feds? What form should that resistance take? If it were me, I would be very careful or at least a lot more specific about EXACTLY what it is you are saying by that statement. It could very easily be interpreted by some as an invocation to break the law and/or a call to violent confrontation.
Getting back to the response to the crisis in Puerto Rico, here is what the Air Force Colonel on the scene (who is Puerto Rican) had to say ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-military-on-puerto-rico-the-problem-is-distribution_us_59ce5906e4b0f3c468060dee) :
__________________________________
Speaking today exclusively and live from Puerto Rico, is Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts in the U.S. commonwealth with a population of more than 3 million. Since the ‘apocalyptic’ Cat 4 storm tore into the spine of Puerto Rico on September 20, Col. Valle has been both duty and blood bound to help.
Col. Valle is a firsthand witness of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico, and as a Puerto Rican himself with family members living in the devastation, his passion for the people is second to none. “It’s just not true,” Col. Valle says of the major disconnect today between the perception of a lack of response from Washington verses what is really going on on the ground. “I have family here. My parents’ home is here. My uncles, aunts, cousins, are all here. As a Puerto Rican, I can tell you that the problem has nothing to do with the U.S. military, FEMA, or the DoD.”
“The aid is getting to Puerto Rico. The problem is distribution. The federal government has sent us a lot of help; moving those supplies, in particular, fuel, is the issue right now,” says Col. Valle. Until power can be restored, generators are critical for hospitals and shelter facilities and more. But, and it’s a big but, they can’t get the fuel to run the generators.
They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed.
“It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government,” says Col. Valle.
Put another way, 80% of truck drivers do not show up to work, and yet again, it’s important to understand why.
“There should be zero blame on the drivers. They can’t get to work, the infrastructure is destroyed, they can’t get fuel themselves, and they can’t call us for help because there’s no communication. The will of the people of Puerto Rico is off the charts. The truck drivers have families to take care of, many of them have no food or water. They have to take care of their family’s needs before they go off to work, and once they do go, they can’t call home,” explains Col. Valle.
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This story was published on The Huffington Post, hardly a right wing publication. It contains FACTS, not unsubstantiated conjecture.
I would hope that those who represent us will in the future work to unify us instead of trying to create and magnify our divisions. In my opinion, that is true leadership.
Jim Neal
Old Mountain View
@Editor – I actually posted only a relevant portion of the story as a quote (albeit a long one). I believed that should fall under “Fair Use”, but I admit I could be mistaken.
Anyone who is interested in seeing the full text of what was deleted can click on the 2nd link in my previous comment. I highly recommend reading it to anyone who is interested in what is REALLY going on in Puerto Rico.
Jim Neal
Old Mountain View