President Donald Trump is putting additional pressure on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ramp up the number of migrants the federal agency arrests.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration issued new quotas for ICE field offices across the country, demanding at least 75 arrests per day of people who are illegally in the country. According to The Washington Post, field office managers will face repercussion if the arrest targets are not met.
RELATED STORY | Deportation flights begin as White House pursues new immigration enforcement priorities
ICE has already started to kick things into high gear, with nearly 1,000 migrant arrests reported Sunday and over 500 others detained on suspicion of being in the United States illegally.
One of the largest raids Sunday included the arrest of nearly 50 Venezuelan migrants in Colorado. DEA agents stormed what they described as a makeshift nightclub near Denver, also seizing drugs, weapons, and cash.
Denver-area migrant groups admit that there may be a criminal element among the migrants arrested in that raid, but say many people are innocent and becoming collateral damage in President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
RELATED STORY | Churches, schools no longer off limits for immigration enforcement
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement often detains anyone who is present when they arrive on the scene," said Jennifer Piper, program director at the American Friends Service Committee of Denver. "They don't have to have an arrest warrant or probable cause to start interrogating people. Often times, people — when they're afraid — will reveal their country of origin and that is often enough for ICE to take them into custody."
Data compiled by Newsweek shows the vast majority of large-scale immigration raids over the past week were executed in Democrat-led states like New York, Colorado, California and New Jersey.
