ICE chief defends agents' use of masks, decries sanctuary jurisdictions

BOSTON -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons connected Monday defended the use of masks by his agents and expressed vexation astatine sanctuary jurisdictions that helium said are hindering the detainment of immigrants who are successful the state illegally.

Lyons said his agents deterioration masks due to the fact that they and their families person been doxxed and “targeted" with decease threats.

“I’m atrocious if radical are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to fto my officers and agents spell retired determination and enactment their lives connected the line, their household connected the enactment due to the fact that radical don’t similar what migration enforcement is,” helium said.

Lyons made the comments during a property league astatine the Boston national courthouse to denote the completion of a May cognition successful which astir 1,500 immigrants were taken into custody crossed Massachusetts. He was leaving the country erstwhile a newsman asked him astir the masks. He turned astir and returned to the podium to reply it.

“Is that the contented present that we’re conscionable upset astir the masks?" helium asked the country of journalists. "Or is anyone upset astir the information that ICE officers’ families were labeled terrorists?”

As portion of past month's operation, authorities successful Massachusetts detained 1,461 immigrants surviving successful Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, Lawrence, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and different communities. ICE said 790 of those immigrants had transgression histories, including the transgression of reentering the U.S. aft deportation, and that 277 had antecedently been ordered to beryllium removed from the state by a national migration judge.

Lyons, who is from Boston, said these operations wouldn't beryllium indispensable if “sanctuary cities would alteration their policy.” There’s nary ineligible explanation for sanctuary metropolis policies, but they mostly bounds practice by section instrumentality enforcement with national migration officers. Courts person repeatedly upheld the legality of sanctuary laws.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security published a wide anticipated database of “ sanctuary jurisdictions " connected its website, lone to person wide disapproval for including localities that person actively supported the Trump administration’s hard-line migration policies.

As of Monday, determination was a “Page Not Found” mistake connection successful its place.

During a March legislature hearing, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and different Democratic mayors defended sanctuary metropolis policies. Brandon Johnson of Chicago said “mischaracterizations and fearmongering” were obscuring the information that transgression successful Chicago is trending down.

“This national medication is making hard-working, taxpaying, God-fearing residents acrophobic to unrecorded their lives," Wu said.

During Monday's property conference, a poster committee with mug shots of unnamed immigrants was displayed. A afloat database of those arrested was not made available, nor was accusation astir the crimes circumstantial individuals are accused of committing.

Lyons called them “dangerous criminals” who are "terrorizing family, friends and our neighbors."

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the cardinal operator of migration argumentation successful the Trump administration, has said that the medication is mounting a extremity of 3,000 arrests by ICE each time and that the fig could spell higher.

Lyons said during an interrogation with Fox & Friends connected Sunday that the bureau was averaging astir 1,600 arrests per day. He said they tin and volition bash more. That marks an summation from erstwhile ICE apprehension information that showed that the bureau arrested 78,155 radical betwixt Jan. 20 and May 19 — an mean of 656 arrests per day.

Lyons heads an bureau astatine the halfway of Trump’s wide deportations agenda. Just past week, the bureau underwent its 2nd large reorganization since Trump took office, arsenic the caput of the Enforcement and Removal Operations conception of ICE retired and the caput of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations conception transitioned to different role.

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AP writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this study from Washington.