Throughout ‘Operation: Midway Blitz,’ the White House has promised to arrest the “worst of the worst” in immigration operations, but has that been the case?
From the start, the messaging has been direct:
“We have focused overwhelmingly day after day after day on bringing in the worst of the worst and getting them off of our streets. Those are the murderers, the rapists the pedophiles…” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem during an appearance in July.
The government has continued to plaster its motto and marching orders on crisp web pages and in frequent statements, reinforcing they’re after the “worst of the worst.”
ICE has taken to posting pictures and backgrounds of criminal fugitives who are thought to be in the U.S. illegally.
Now though, according to its own data, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the embattled agency known as ICE, is falling far short of maximizing an extensive law enforcement effort that has resulted in tens of thousands of arrests in Chicago and across the country.
The past year of ICE data analyzed by NBC 5 Investigates shows, on average nationally, 84% of detainees have no criminal convictions. That is a figure that also reflects what we have found in Chicago since Operation Midway Blitz began on September 9th.
“I would even say probably over 90-some percent have no past criminal convictions,” said former ICE chief of staff and long time immigration official Jason Houser. “The irony here is over the last 10 months, we’ve seen an administration focused on the sort of theatrical arrests. There hasn’t been a focus on or prioritization or even putting resources against removing those that have final orders of removal and that those that are national security or public safety threats in.”
Only 16% of ICE detainees have any criminal history and an even smaller percentage is considered to pose a serious threat. Less than seven percent are labeled as the most serious threat concern in the ICE database cited by NBC 5 Investigates.
Our investigation found that some metro Chicago detainees who were at first labeled as worst of the worst ended up not living up to that billing.
Jean Carlos Aranda Gonzalez – called “the worst of the worst” in a September 10th Chicago ICE press release -has no criminal violations on his record.
Christian Alejandro Lopez-Cervantes was labeled the “worst of the worst” in a September 16th Chicago ICE press release and Carlos Rene Contreras earned the description in an October 1 ICE Chicago release.
Neither individual has any criminal convictions.
“ICE has a finite and a specific amount of detention beds or jails that they can put individuals in,” noted Houser. “Americans need to ask themselves if those should be used for those that have no criminal conviction, have been working here for decades and just for the sort of the theatrics of meeting these quotas of arrest and removal or of those beds should be utilized for those that are convicted criminals, gang members, human drug traffickers.”
ICE officials are not taking their foot off the gas here in Chicago. Arrests continue at a brisk pace, but barely one in ten is considered a criminal threat. And Homeland Security and the Trump administration are not explaining why they promise one thing and achieve something different…why the mission is to detain and deport dangerous criminals but in actuality there continues to be a miniscule percentage of criminal arrests by immigration teams.