Sunday Dec 13, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Immigration agents arrested 280 people in California in their biggest push yet to round up suspected illegal immigrants with criminal records in local communities, authorities said yesterday.

More than 400 agents and local law enforcement officers fanned out across the state in the three-day search led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"These are not people who we want walking our streets," enforcement director John Morton said. "We're going to focus on those people who choose to pursue a life of crime in the United States rather than pursue the American dream of education, hard work and success."

More than 80 per cent of the people arrested this week had prior convictions for serious or violent crimes, according to the enforcement unit. Seventeen people will face federal charges for re-entering the country illegally after being deported.

The arrests carried out this week were similar to those made in previous years by fugitive operations teams, which were created in 2003 to help reduce the number of immigrants who failed to obey deportation orders.

(Source AP)