Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan may soon make good on claims that federal agents will soon conduct more immigration enforcement actions in newly minted “sanctuary state” California, if a source for the San Francisco Chronicle is correct.
On Tuesday the Chronicle cited an anonymous source who stated that ICE would conduct a large-scale enforcement action in northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area within coming weeks.
Last October Homan made clear that California’s Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing of the state’s new sanctuary law would spur ICE “to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at work sites, which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests, instead of focusing on arrests at jails and prisons where transfers are safer for ICE officers and the community.”
Immigration enforcement has been ongoing in California, with federal authorities carrying out enforcement activities like recently initialed payroll audits of one hundred 7-11 stores that quickly resulted in the arrest of 21 suspected illegal aliens. California was one of many states where these actions took place.
ICE official Derek Benner pointed to the 7-11 enforcements as just the beginning of much more to come, according to the Associated Press.
The Chronicle’s source estimated that arrests will number in excess of 1,500, and that the operation would target illegal aliens who have already received final deportation orders and criminals. Days into January, and into the first days of California’s state law legislation taking effect, Homan warned California to “hold on tight” in an interview with Fox News.
The report further conveyed the source’s claim that immigration officers were being brought in to help carry out upcoming immigration actions.
California became the key ideological battleground in the debate over sanctuary jurisdictions with the killing of 32-year-old Kate Steinle by an illegal alien — who had been deported several times and convicted of multiple felonies — in July 2015.
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