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ICE Launches Detention Operations in Immigration Sanctuary

An immigration official confirmed to CNN that ICE is focusing on detaining immigrants in places that do not cooperate with their agents, a practice that a Texas judge had revealed this week. Trump government overtakes Obama in deportations in February / Univision The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is increasing its detention and deportation operations for immigrants in sanctuary jurisdictions to pressure them to change their immigration policies, a senior immigration official told CNN. The anonymous official said some ICE officials have discussed the possibility of further raids in sanctuary jurisdictions, including cities like San Francisco, Chicago and New York, and counties such as Travis in Texas and Cook in Illinois. The source confirmed a complaint this week by a federal judge in Texas who said that a major operation that completed ICE last month in Travis County was done in retaliation against the shantytown policies of county sheriff Sally Hernandez. ICE denied Tuesday that the operation it conducted in February - in which some 50 immigrants were detained in the city of Austin - was a punishment for the sheriff's sanctuary policies. Greg Casar, an Austin councilman, had said at the time that ICE's operation in his city had been a political act. "The goal of these ICE actions is silence. They will not silence us," he said. Focus on Travis Travis County in Texas appeared Monday as the jurisdiction that cooperated least with ICE during the last week of January in the Trump administration's first weekly report on crimes associated with immigrants who have been released into sanctuary jurisdictions across the country country. Travis's sheriff decided in February to stop cooperating with immigration detention orders sent by ICE to prisons in his county, unless the agency sends a court order or the immigrant has committed a serious crime. At a public hearing on Monday, a West Texas federal magistrate, Andrew Austin, revealed that ICE had been notified earlier that ICE agents had advised him in January that they would carry out the February arrest operation in Austin for Punishing sheriff Hernandez's sanctuary policies.

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