On Tuesday Scripps News spoke with Todd Lyons, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about the agency's objectives.
"We have almost 1.5 million people that are here in the country that have been legally ordered deported or removed by a federal judge. So that's someone that has an outstanding deportation. Are that we're going to go ahead and focus on that, but we're also going to focus on the worst of the worst," Lyons said.
"What we've been trying to do is really educate the public on the fact that that we do have so many of these international fugitives and folks that have really serious criminal histories that are hiding in plain sight, and unfortunately they were weren't vetted properly and at the border previously. So now we'll go ahead and try to, you know, get rid of these."
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Lyons said he wanted to see more cooperation from state and local officials — by doing more to arrest immigrants with criminal histories, and by toning down rhetoric against federal enforcement.
"When we go out and make an arrest after someone gets released from local jurisdiction, you'd only need five or six officers to do that. Now, we have to go out there with those five to six officers make the arrest, but 15 to 20 just to protect them," Lyons said. "You wouldn't see that many officers and special agents on the street if we had that cooperation. "
Lyons' comments come as the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, continue an unprecedented immigration crackdown called Operation Metro Surge. The deployment involves more than 2,000 federal agents in the Twin Cities, where they have clashed with protesters and where one agent shot and killed Renee Good on January 7.
At a press conference on Tuesday, DHS officials said agencies had made more than 10,000 arrests of "illegal aliens" since President Trump took office. 113 arrests occurred over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
