ICE Conducts Massive Capital-Region Sweep, Arrests 1,328 Illegal Immigrants

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 1,328 illegal immigrants across Virginia and Maryland in a two-week operation that federal officials described as one of the agency’s most successful to date, working largely out of public view in jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Operation Safe Community — Washington, D.C., ran from August 1 to August 14. The Department of Homeland Security said nearly 400 of those arrested had criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States, including warrants and histories involving murder, attempted murder, rape, sexual battery, kidnapping, robbery, identity theft, hit-and-run and driving while intoxicated. Officers also took into custody members of MS-13, Tren de Aragua and the 18th Street Gang.

Among those named by DHS and ICE were a Salvadoran national wanted on a murder warrant in Richmond, Virginia; a Haitian national with a record that included attempted murder and assault; a Honduran convicted of felony hit-and-run; a Guatemalan arrested in Alexandria whose history included rape and aggravated sexual battery of incapacitated victims; and a Jamaican national arrested in Alexandria with convictions for kidnapping, identity theft and illegal re-entry.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said ICE officers “are hard at work every single day getting these dangerous illegal aliens out of our country” and that sanctuary policies in Virginia and Maryland counties had not stopped the arrests. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Acting Assistant Director Patricia Hyde said officers were again “out in the streets arresting and removing criminal alien offenders from American communities.” Those arrested remain in ICE custody pending removal.

The Washington-area sweep followed a similar July operation in Georgia that produced more than 1,200 arrests. Officials presented the quieter, targeted approach as a continuation of the administration’s mass-removal agenda after earlier high-visibility raids. All of those taken into custody in the capital-region operation are slated for deportation proceedings.