Raids Net 36 in O.C. Who Face Deporting

Thirty-six illegal immigrants who served time for child sex offenses but were released in Orange County rather than deported were among more than 2,100 criminal foreign nationals arrested in a nationwide sweep announced Wednesday.

Among the 722 illegal immigrants arrested in California in “Operation Return to Sender” was a Romanian national living in Anaheim who had sex with a 14-year-old girl, and a Tongan native, also living in Anaheim, who molested two underage girls, said officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“People who are in this country are in violation of the law already, but we were prioritizing criminal aliens, specifically convicted child sex offenders, because they present a very real threat,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Most of those arrested in the nationwide sweep, which began May 26 and ended Tuesday, served time in county jails, Kice said. But instead of being deported, they were released, she said.

The number of illegal immigrants in county jails, particularly the Los Angles area, is so large that even identifying them can be a problem, Kice said.

Officials said the raids focused on the most dangerous criminals, including gang members, pedophiles, violent felons and those who sneaked back into the country after being deported.

Agents used databases such as registered sex offender lists and worked with local law enforcement agencies to identify people who should have been held for deportation after serving jail terms.

“ICE will leave no stone unturned in hunting down and deporting aliens who victimize our communities,” said Julie Meyers, assistant secretary for ICE, at a Houston news conference.

California had more arrests than any other state, with 402 in San Diego, 81 in San Francisco and 47 in Los Angeles, as well as the 36 in Orange County.

The convicted criminals targeted in Orange County included Kalisi Blake, 43, a Tongan native who lives in Anaheim, and Romanian-born Gabriel Mircea Ionescue, 28, also of Anaheim.

Both were previously convicted of lewd and lascivious acts with a child for extended periods and are awaiting deportation, officials said.

Those arrested in Orange County also included foreign nationals from Canada, Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru.

Most of the arrestees were taken in on administrative immigration violations, Kice said, but one person, a Mexican whose record included a prior deportation and a child rape conviction, is being prosecuted for reentering the country after deportation, a felony.

Among those nabbed nationwide were 367 gang members, including street soldiers in the deadly Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, authorities said.

Agents caught a Salvadoran gang member, who was convicted of stabbing and paralyzing a 13-year-old boy, working at a rental car company at Logan International Airport in Boston.

ICE officials estimated that the nation’s jails and prisons book about 630,000 illegal immigrants on criminal charges each year, but many are released back into U.S. society.

To combat the problem, ICE plans to expand its use of special agreements with state and local jails and prisons to ensure that illegal immigrants with criminal records are identified and deported after they serve their time, Kice said.

Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona submitted an application to participate in the program.

The department plans to train jail deputies and gang-crime investigators to add citizenship checks to their review of inmates and suspects.

In some cases, said sheriff’s Capt. Timothy Board, gang crime detectives might initiate deportation proceedings against suspects who are illegal immigrants even before they are convicted.

Kumar Kibble, who led the ICE operation in Orange County, said the partnership with the Sheriff’s Department, if approved, would add to the hundreds of deportations in the county that his agency made each year.

In Washington, where lawmakers are trying to forge a compromise on a new immigration policy, at least one senator from a border state said the crackdown was a step in the right direction.

“These are exactly the kinds of offenders we must prevent from entering our country in the first place,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who will be on the conference committee that negotiates an immigration bill with the House of Representatives.

“We must continue to track, find and remove these dangerous criminals who have found their way into the U.S. to keep our streets and communities safe.”

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Times staff writer Nicole Gaouette and the Associated Press contributed to this report.