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After 3 Weeks in Office, Half the Country Thinks Trump Should Be Impeached

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Backwoods Sleuth2/10/2017 1:03:56 pm PST

A mural on the US-Mexico border wall in Tijuana

Early Thursday, immigration attorneys in Los Angeles started getting calls from clients across the city. Some callers reported being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at their homes. Others were caught at their workplaces, including one man detained at a Target store. The first round of Trump-era deportation sweeps had begun.

The news quickly filtered back to immigrant rights activists, who confirmed the detentions and alerted their networks. According to Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), as many as 134 immigrants were detained in the sweep. Based on her conversations with lawyers, many of those detained had outstanding orders for deportation—and some were sent back to Mexico as early as Thursday afternoon.

An ICE spokeswoman told Mother Jones that “enforcement surges have been part of our operational play book for many years.” She added: “Our focus in these enforcement efforts, and in our day-to-day operations, continues to be individuals who pose a public safety threat.”

The sweeps were the second high-profile ICE action in two days. On Wednesday night, immigration agents in Phoenix found themselves swarmed by protesters when they attempted to deport Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant with two teenage children who are American citizens. García de Rayos had been caught using a fake Social Security number during a ICE workplace raid in 2008.