The U.S. Customs and Enforcement agency (ICE) announced that a massive operation in Massachusetts resulted in nearly 400 arrests, including over 200 apprehensions of illegal immigrants who had serious criminal convictions or charges.
“The Commonwealth is a safer place for our residents to live and work because ICE and our federal law enforcement partners arrested hundreds of alien offenders and removed them from the streets of Massachusetts,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde said in a press release.
The operation, which took place between March 18 and March 23, netted the arrests of 370 illegal immigrants in the Boston area. Among those, 205 of the migrants arrested had “significant criminal convictions or charges,” the release noted, including six who were “currently facing charges or convictions for murder, drug trafficking, organized crime, and money laundering.”
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The six-day operation targeted “egregious criminal alien offenders,” the release notes, including members of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua who were operating “in and around Boston.”
The raids came despite Boston’s status as one of several so-called “sanctuary” cities across the country, jurisdictions that restrict local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Boston’s Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu has doubled down on those policies in recent days, vowing to continue protecting illegal immigrants in the city during her State of the City address last week.
“No one tells Boston how to take care of our own, not kings, and not presidents who think they are kings. Boston was born facing down bullies,” she said.
“You belong here,” she told immigrants.
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ICE agents were joined by personnel from several other federal agencies, including the FBI, DEA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ATF, U.S. Marshals Service and DSS.
“Safeguarding the integrity of the immigration and citizenship process is critical. We simply can’t permit violent and dangerous criminals to enter or remain in the United States under false pretenses, with unknown allegiances and intentions. It’s a direct threat to public safety and our national security,” Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division Jodi Cohen said in the release.
Those arrested in the operation included a Dominican migrant who illegally re-entered the U.S. after previously being charged with trafficking fentanyl, a Chilean migrant convicted on four counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, and a Honduran migrant convicted of rape of a child.
Federal authorities also seized roughly 44 kilograms of methamphetamines, five kilograms of fentanyl and 1.2 kilograms of cocaine during the raid.
“ICE and our federal law enforcement partners are committed to protecting the homeland through the eradication of transnational criminal organizations, dismantling dangerous criminal gangs preying on the American public, locating and arresting criminal alien offenders, and making our communities a safer place to live,” Hyde said.
Wu’s office did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
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