More immigrants with no criminal convictions were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in San Diego during the first quarter of the current fiscal year than in any other area of the US. The ICE field office in San Diego, which covers the countries of San Diego and Imperial, is the nation’s only field office where most arrests, around 72 percent, were of immigrants without criminal records, according to the agency’s data.
ICE officers in San Diego arrested 1622 immigrants without criminal records between October and December 2017, as well as 637 immigrants who had criminal convictions. Three states – North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina – are covered by the Atlanta field office, which had the second highest non-criminal immigrant arrest numbers at 1592, 41 percent of their arrest rate of 2343.
ICE spokeswoman, Lauren Mack, claims that the arrest of non-criminal immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the counties of San Diego and Imperial is a reflection of trends related to illegal immigration at local borders, as well as arrests made in the midst of standard fugitive operations and individuals found at local jails.
The biggest percentage of arrests of non-criminal immigrants in other border field offices was in Phoenix, at 43 percent, where ICE took 733 immigrants without criminal records into custody. Other California field offices differ markedly from San Diego’s figures, with 16 percent of arrests being of non-criminal immigrants in Los Angeles, and 22 percent in San Francisco.