(NewsNation) — A recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in South Florida tallied more than 1,100 migrant arrests, but civil rights organizations and other groups are concerned about some of those who were swept up and detained by federal agents.
ICE officials claim that 63% of those who were arrested during the operation, dubbed “Operation Tidal Wave,” had prior criminal records. However, Abel Delgado, president of the Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus, said the raid also led to the arrest of at least one U.S. citizen, as well as migrants with legal protective status, leading to questions about the operation.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said more immigration enforcement will take place as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. DeSantis recently said there are tens of thousands of immigrants living in Florida who have already been ordered to leave the United States but have not.
While DeSantis claimed the previous orders of removal equate to due process, Delgado disagrees, saying that those removal orders do not equate to immediate deportation.
“That’s not how due process works,” he told NewsNation.
Delgado also takes issue with the fact that the federal government should be in charge of detaining migrants who entered the country illegally, rather than local law enforcement agencies being involved in immigration enforcement.
Delgado is not opposed to federal immigration agents going after what White House border czar Tom Homan has called the “worst of the worst.” But he fears that ICE raids like Operation Tidal Wave are extending beyond that.
“We’ve always supported criminals being deported and seeing (the) law come to fruition,” Delgado told NewsNation. “But we don’t know that’s happening.”
Delgado said that he and other organizations do not trust the claims that federal immigration agents are only going after immigrants with criminal backgrounds. He said DeSantis and others have not provided proof to back up the statistics he offered concerning who was swept up in the recent raid.
“When you have an operation this large, people are going to get caught in the crosshairs because the governor and his team do not care about following the law,” he said.