Santa Cruz and federal agents in war of words over whether a gang sweep was really a secret immigrat
Source: Los Angeles Times
Santa Cruz and federal agents in war of words over whether a gang sweep was really a secret immigration raid
A northern California raid ostensibly targeting violent gang members triggered a dispute Thursday, with Santa Cruz’s police chief angrily accusing the Homeland Security Department of turning it into a secret immigration sweep.
Chief Kevin Vogel accused Homeland Security officials of lying about the scope of the raids conducted jointly between his department and federal agents this month aimed at apprehending MS-13 gang members.
“The Department of Homeland Security, unbeknownst to us at the Santa Cruz Police Department, had acted outside the scope of this operation and had detained and removed a number of individuals from locations based upon their immigration status,” Vogel said at a news conference. “The community has an absolute right to be angry over this. This has violated the trust of the community, and we cannot tell you how disappointed we are by the betrayal of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Federal officials denied that they acted to deceive local authorities, and said police knew others besides the gang members would be held briefly to ascertain their identities and histories. The department said it detained 10 gang members and 11 others for immigration violations. All but one of those detained for the immigration violations were released, federal officials said.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-cruz-ice-raid-20170223-story.html
(nb - this was posted at 12:20 AM Eastern time and is within the 12-hour window)
This was apparently the incident my relative reported last week: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028650100
= new reply since forum marked as read
Many of Trump's conservative anti-government voters claim to be against this sort of thing. 