84 people in North Carolina face deportation after ICE raids (MyFox8.com)

84 people in North Carolina face deportation after ICE raids
BY CARLY HILDYARD,
POSTED 6:46 PM, FEBRUARY 13, 2017, UPDATED AT 06:47PM, FEBRUARY 13, 2017

North Carolina is one of seven states where undocumented immigrants have been taken into custody in the past week. Of those, 84 people in North Carolina now face deportation.

President Donald Trump tweeted this weekend saying this is part of fulfilling his campaign promises, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seem to tell a different story.

In a statement Monday, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly said these arrests are routine and daily operations. He said in a series of "targeted enforcement operations," immigration officials targeted people who posed public safety threats, including criminals, gang members and people who re-entered the United States illegally after they were already removed.

In Washington, D.C., chanting protesters filled the streets outside the White House this weekend. They opposed ICE raids across the country.

Hundreds of undocumented people in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, California, Texas, New York, Illinois and Texas face deportation.

Here in the Piedmont, Chapman Law Firm says it's getting numerous calls from both legal and undocumented immigrants.

“They are really concerned about their safety and the safety of their family members. They’re terrified," Gerry Chapman said.

About 190 of those arrests happened in Georgia and the Carolinas. Most of them, 127 out of those 190, had "prior criminal convictions," according to ICE.

ICE did not release many specifics on who they arrested, but we were given one profile of a man arrested in Charlotte. He's a Mexican national who'd been previously convicted on three counts of taking indecent liberties with a child. He was deported once before and returned illegally again.

Some of the undocumented immigrants in custody will face criminal charges in the United States. Others will be moved through the legal process of being deported from the country.

In the same statement, ICE officials said while these raids are targeted, "reports of ICE checkpoints and sweeps are false, dangerous and irresponsible."

Trump commented on the arrests in a joint news conference with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday.

"I said in the beginning, we are going to get the bad ones," Trump said.

Trump bragged about the operation, which ICE has said is routine and was not tied to Trump's recent executive order dealing with interior security.

"We have really done a great job," he said. "We're actually taking people that are criminals, very, very hardened criminals in some cases, with a tremendous track record of abuse and problems, and we're getting them out."

Trump's executive order does give ICE officials the power to use their own discretion when making an arrest. They can decide whether that person poses a risk to public safety or national security, event if they have not been convicted of a criminal offense.

Right now, about 11 million undocumented people are believed to live in the U.S. During former President Barack Obama's terms, at least 2.5 million people were deported from the U.S. That number went up from about 2 million people deported during former President George W. Bush's terms.