Federal officials have arrested more than 130 undocumented immigrants in San Diego during the last three weeks. It’s the latest blitz in a national effort to round up more than 570,000 immigrants who've been ordered deported. KPBS reporter Amy Isackson has the story.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have a list of 7,500 immigrants in San Diego who’ve been ordered to leave the country but are still here.
During the last three weeks they arrested 73 people on that list, with the help of federal officials from San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Robin Baker heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s, or ICE’s, Detention and Removal Operations in San Diego. He says the other 64 people were arrested in the sweeps.
Baker : We’re not doing random sweeps. We’re going to specific locations. And when we get there, if a person doesn’t have any ID on them, we start questioning them. That’s how we encounter the rest of the people.
Baker says ICE has reduced the number of people on its list by 20 percent since last year.
He says there'll be more sweeps in San Diego before summer's end.
This year, ICE will add 29 more teams nationally to round up people who’ve ignored deportation orders.
Amy Isackson, KPBS News.
