“Unheard of event”
US military veteran arrested in anti-migrant raid
Updated 01/24/2025 – 9:31 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
The new US government praises its deportation campaign against illegal immigrants. But the number of people arrested is not much higher than under Joe Biden.
The new US administration of President Donald Trump says it has begun the announced mass deportations of migrants. Government spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt announced on
“The largest mass deportation operation in history is well underway,” Leavitt wrote. “Promise made. Promise kept.” However, the numbers are not necessarily significantly higher than those of the recent past: the immigration authority ICE reported more than 170,000 arrests for 2023 – an average of around 467 per day.
After taking office on Monday, Trump signed various decrees to curb irregular migration. Under the Republican, ICE is again allowed to detain undocumented migrants in sensitive locations such as churches, schools or hospitals – a departure from the protective regulations that applied under his predecessor Joe Biden.
The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, announced that there was an ICE raid in the city near New York on Thursday. The agency’s agents arrested both undocumented residents and US citizens without presenting a court order. That violates the constitution. “Newark will not stand idly by while people are unlawfully terrorized,” Baraka said.
According to Baraka, among those unlawfully arrested was a US Army veteran. Baraka wrote in a statement that he was “exposed to the humiliation that the legality of his military papers was not recognized.” This “outrageous act blatantly violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects people’s right against unlawful searches,” Baraka said.
A spokesman for the immigration agency ICE justified the arrests, saying that officers could also encounter US citizens during their raids and that it was therefore justified to ask them for their documents. The ICE spokesman did not want to comment on the case of the arrested US veteran to the Axios portal because it was an “ongoing investigation”.