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ICE announces 75 arrests in four days across North Texas and Oklahoma

Federal officers with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested “75 criminal aliens and immigration violators” across 128 counties.

DALLAS — The ICE Dallas Field Office announced on Tuesday the arrest of 75 individuals during a targeted enforcement that lasted four days. 

Federal officers with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested “75 criminal aliens and immigration violators” in North Texas and Oklahoma during a four-day enforcement action, which ended Thursday.

“Forty-nine of the 75 had either a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges. Twenty-six were either re-entries, or they were final orders that failed to report. Of that 26, three of those, we discovered, had a pending criminal issue in other locations. And one of those was a sex-crime offender,”  ICE Dallas field office director Marc Moore said.

The 75 arrests happened across 128 counties in North Texas and Oklahoma. 

Moore would not identify exactly where in North Texas the arrests took place.

“Obviously, (our officers) know the targets. We’re going after specific individuals,” Moore said. “We’re doing specific surveillance to identify where it seems the best to contact that individual, both for our officer’s safety, for the individual’s safety and to the public’s safety.”

ICE reported those arrested with criminal histories included convictions for crimes including, drug possession, assault, and illegal entry.

The 75 individuals arrested during this operation are from the following countries: Mexico (58), Guatemala (6), Honduras (6), El Salvador (2), Kenya (1), Ecuador (1), and Vietnam (1).

Rene Martinez is a longtime civil rights leader in Dallas with the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.  

“If they’re people that have felonies, we need to get them off the street. I want to make that very clear,” said Martinez. “The question is: How many had felonies? How many had charges of that nature? And then how many did not? How many have been deported or arrested for very minor incidents, minor misdemeanors? That’s the question.”

Almost three months ago, more than 250 people were put on buses outside an electronic business in Allen. The raid marked the biggest ICE raid in a decade. 

“Everyone is needing workers and here we are harassing folks because a vast majority of these folks that are undocumented are working!” said Martinez. “They’re here to work. They’re here to contribute to our economy.”

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