September 13, 2007

ICE arrests 15 illegal alien fugitives in Lexington, Neb.

OMAHA, Neb. - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers here arrested 15 immigration fugitives in Lexington, Neb., during a two-day enforcement operation.

The operation concluded Wednesday and is part of an ongoing nationwide initiative focused on arresting targeted fugitives - illegal aliens who had been ordered removed by a federal immigration judge but failed to surrender or leave the United States. In addition to the fugitives, ICE officers also arrested one additional immigration violator who was discovered at the home of one of the fugitives.

"It offends society's basic sense of fairness when someone absconds after a federal immigration judge has ordered him to leave the country," said Scott Baniecke, field office director for the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Bloomington, Minn. "A requirement of participating in due process is accepting and abiding by the court's ruling." Baniecke oversees a five-state area that includes Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Those aliens arrested during this operation were citizens of Guatemala or El Salvador.

In June, ICE announced that for the first time it had reduced the backlog of open fugitive alien cases in the country. "Fugitive aliens" are illegal aliens who abscond after having been ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge.

Between September 2003 and September 2006, the fugitive alien population grew by an average of 5,682 fugitives per month or 68,184 new cases per year. For the first time in U.S. history ICE has seen that growth level off for the last eight months and then drop by more than 500 names during May and June. ICE accomplished this decrease by implementing a number of initiatives, including: streamlining business practices, tripling the number of fugitive operations teams, improving intelligence and analysis, increasing available detention space, and ending the practice of "catch and release" at the border. According to ICE's Deportable Alien Control System (DACS) database, there are now more than 632,000 fugitive aliens in the United States.

-- ICE --

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of five integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.

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