Los Angeles California.- Last summer, the president Donald Trump launched angry threats from make mass raids focused on about 2,000 undocumented with criminal records in 10 sanctuary cities. Los Angeles was in the peephole, but nothing happened. Although at that time there were only a few operations, Panic prevailed in migrant communities.
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The director of the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) office in Los Angeles, David Marin, explained in an interview with Univision News why in recent years no large-scale raids have been seen in this metropolis, inhabited by a million people without papers. The last one was registered 12 years ago in a factory in the San Fernando Valley and He concluded with 138 arrests.
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“I am not a supporter of doing that,” said the official, adding that doing so instills fear in Hispanic neighborhoods and ends up affecting the actions carried out by teams dedicated to the search for fugitives.
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“I don’t think there’s a need to be doing that. (massive operations). The only thing that generates is that everyone in the community worries and says that there are raids. We would go to a place in La Puente (a city in eastern Los Angeles County), we would surround the area, arrest many people and deport them. Because it is more effective to do it every day, ”the official described.
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Marin’s point of view has not changed since leaving to stop undocumented in the angelic neighborhoods during the Barack Obama administration. Their opinions are still not incendiary, like those often heard in the White House and ICE headquarters. He even claims that his officers do not take any undocumented immigrant into custody on the road, without distinguishing whether it is a convicted murderer or a father who went to work, as claimed frequently.
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“We do not arrest all the people we come into contact with, with whom we have established a probable cause, who should not be here. We use our discretion ”, The official said.
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They make exceptions, he exemplified, if they verify the criminal record of a detainee and realize that he has a pending immigration process. “It may not make sense that we put them in custody unless they have committed some other crime. But if they are already going through the immigration process, they have a court hearing and have already seen an immigration judge, then it may not make sense to stop them, ”he said.
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Statistics, however, show that ‘La Migra’ agents They have not been so forgiving in the Trump era. In December, a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) revealed that since 2017 the agency has arrested fewer people with a serious criminal record and even if they had no history or only committed minor offenses.
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The reduction happened of just over 8,000 arrests of people with serious crimes in October 2017 to about 6,000 last April, According to that analysis. TRAC notes that convictions related to terrorism and gangs “are remarkably rare” in the undocumented.
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Arresting less criminals
ICE figures indicate that the vast majority of 6,657 arrested in Los Angeles between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019 they had criminal convictions (5,766) or pending criminal charges (418). In that period, almost 8,600 migrants who were detained in this city They were returned to their communities of origin.
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Seven of the 24 ICE offices across the country exceeded the arrests made in Los Angeles. Dallas and Atlanta led that list with 16,900 Y 13,247 arrests in fiscal year 2019, respectively.
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This legislation, which has been in force for two years, has forced them to carry out more operations in the streets, warns the head of ICE in Los Angeles. “Before we arrested them inside a jail, in a safe environment, not only for us, but for the public, Now we have to go out to the community, ”he lamented.
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“And when we are in the communities it is inevitable that we meet other people … Maybe family members, maybe friends,” said the official, who says that his captures become emotional if they take a parent .
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“When we perform a selective arrest operation going to someone’s house and maybe they have children there. And you have to arrest someone in front of their children. I have done it and as a father it is difficult, it is very difficult, ”he said.
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ICE: we only frighten criminals
Marin is one of the 4,200 Hispanics who work for ICE Across the country, 21% of its entire payroll. Their ancestors lived in Texas and Arizona when that territory belonged to Mexico. He is a veteran of the Armed Forces and has been with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for almost 25 years. It began in the extinct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and joined the ranks of ICE since its creation in 2003. It already has 11 years in the Los Angeles office, which covers seven counties in southern California.
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“I have been doing this since 1995. The (immigration) laws have not changed at all. I am enforcing the same laws for four presidents (from Bill Clinton to Trump), ”he says.
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The official emphasizes that he has spent three decades locating, detaining and deporting migrants who only came to commit crimes to this country. “ICE is in a unique position where we can prevent crimes,” he emphasized. “But I think what has happened is that in California there is the focus of attention for all these sanctuary policies,” he added.
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He claims that his agents have become the target of angry protests and people who film them with their cell phones They barely identify them. “That makes us more visible. When we were in prisons, most of the public and the media did not know what we were doing. ”
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When asked about accusations that ICE instills fear in migrant communities, Marin responds that his job is precisely to prevent criminals from doing their own thing in those neighborhoods.
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“How do we terrorize the community when we arrest criminal aliens and take them out of the community? Do you know who are terrified? Criminal aliens, ”he concluded.
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