In the largest operation throughout Colorado this year, 78 convicted criminal aliens, immigration fugitives and immigration violators were arrested last week during a three-day targeted enforcement operation by immigration and custom agents (ICE).
During the operation, which ended Thursday evening, ICE officers located and arrested 64 aliens with prior criminal convictions, including five gang members. Some of the criminal aliens taken into custody had prior convictions for serious or violent crimes, such as homicide, selling illegal drugs, sexual crimes against children, resisting arrest and assault, vehicle theft, and drunken-driving convictions. In addition, 12 of the individuals ICE officers took into custody were illegal aliens with outstanding orders of deportation who had failed to leave the country. The foreign nationals detained during the operation who are not being criminally prosecuted will be deported.
ICE’s Fugitive Operations Program is just one facet of the Department of Homeland Security’s broader strategy to heighten the federal government’s effectiveness at identifying and removing dangerous criminal aliens from the United States.
Largely as a result of these initiatives ICE, this year, has removed a total of 176,736 criminal aliens from the United States, which is a record number.
