MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Federal raids and deportations are ramping up across the country, including in South Florida.
Nearly 1,000 people were picked up and shipped out of the United States over the weekend.
The crackdown is causing fear among immigrants in South Florida. The line was long Monday outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Miramar.
The head of ICE in South Florida said with a new president comes new goals.
“It’s a change. It’s a change in philosophy,” Garrett Ripa, who heads ICE’s Miami field office, told ABC News. “We’ve generally worked kind of behind the scenes in the past and that is not the vision of this administration. They want us out in front of the cameras.”
ICE agents took a number of immigrants into custody in South Florida, including a man with a decades-old drug trafficking conviction.
“We make a discretionary call on every case that we arrest, whether that’s a criminal or not a criminal, but we’re going to take enforcement action on every individual,” Ripa said.
Ripa said the immigrants will get due process. He says in some cases, they may have hearings and other cases they may be deported.
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