The Clarion Ledger contacted the Madison County Sheriff’s Department and ICE about the recent arrests, but neither responded as of this publication.
At this time, the arrests do not appear to be part of a large-scale raid like the one carried out in 2019, when hundreds of immigration officials descended on seven food processing plants in Mississippi and arrested approximately 680 people suspected of living and working in the country illegally.
Authorities described it as the largest immigration operation in over a decade, as well as the largest single-state raid in history.
In 2024, there were about 310 arrests per day on average, but that number has since risen to around 433 per day, with a high likelihood of increasing further.
Homan stated that the Biden administration prohibited ICE from arresting migrants unless they had been convicted of a serious crime, but that policy is no longer in effect.
“There is nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act that requires you to be convicted of a crime.” “If you’re here illegally, you may be removed,” he said. “Our primary focus is on addressing public safety and national security threats. That is exactly what we are doing right now.
Raids have occurred in major cities including Boston, Denver, New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Newark, N.J., according to reports.
Several of these, including Newark, are sanctuary cities, meaning they have refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in deportation proceedings.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement Thursday that ICE agents detained a number of people without a warrant, including US citizens, a US military veteran, and undocumented individuals.
“Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized,” the statement read.
Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, another sanctuary city, launched a campaign in conjunction with the public transportation system in which digital monitors at train stations provide migrants with “know your rights” information, according to WLS-TV.
“Any of the measures that the president is looking to execute against working people in the city of Chicago …” Johnson stated, according to the outlet, “We will defend our city.” It’s really that simple.
However, Homan pushed back on sanctuary cities, claiming that if they cooperated by allowing ICE access to local jails, federal agents would not have to enter communities to arrest people.
“They’re not letting us in the county jail because of their sanctuary laws, but if we can arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of a jail — which is safer for the officer, safer for the aliens, safer for the community — then it’d be a lot less of the type of low-level offenders, and be a lot less arrested,” Homan told me.
When agents are forced into the community, “sanctuary cities will get exactly what they don’t want: more agents in neighborhoods and more collateral arrests while we’re doing this criminal operation,” he warned.
“I hope the sanctuary cities come around,” he told me.