ICE’s Eagle’s Shield operation leads to 132 arrests on East Coast

Officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested 132 individuals on criminal and civil violations at the conclusion of Operation Eagle’s Shield last week.

Eagle’s Shield, which ran from July 9 to July 20, was an enforcement operation that targeted notable public safety threats throughout Virginia and Washington, D.C. The operation drew help from other field offices as well as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to identify what they called “priority targets” in the region.

“We set out to locate and detain known, dangerous criminal aliens who are hiding and operating in the neighborhoods we call home,” Russell Hott, ERO Washington field office director, said. “Today’s announcement is the result of the absolutely essential work our ICE officers perform to identify the worst of the worst and ensure they have no refuge here.”

In this latest operation, the ERO Washington Field Office said that it captured members of several notoriously violent transnational criminal organizations such as MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. Other criminal charges included re-entry after removal, forgery, battery, assault with a deadly weapon, and sexual assault.

Individuals arrested came from Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Mongolia, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, and Sudan.