JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Nearly 800 alleged illegal immigrants in Florida were detained during the first four days of a massive statewide U.S. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) sweep dubbed “Operation Tidal Wave.”
The operation was conducted with the help of Florida law enforcement, according to ICE.
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The arrests were announced alongside a series of photos published to social media, with ICE touting the results of the multi-agency immigration crackdown.
“When 800 people are arrested in Florida, you’re gonna get a lot of calls,” Stephanie Scarborough, an immigration attorney with Scarborough Law, said.
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Scarborough said one of her clients was among those detained during “Operation Tidal Wave” and taken to the Baker County Detention Center.
While she wasn’t comfortable naming her client yet, she explained she’s been working for several years to get him a waiver that would allow him to go back to Brazil and return to the U.S. legally, as he’s currently married to a U.S. citizen and is the sole moneymaker in the household.
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Pending waiver or not, she claims ICE agents didn’t care, as her client does have an active removal order.
“So, they’re casting a wide net. They’re not just looking for murderers, rapists and MS-13, like they want to say in their PR announcements. That’s not what’s happening here,” Scarborough said.
To make matters worse for the family, Scarborough said they just welcomed their first child two weeks ago.
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“It makes it look really sexy for them to say, ‘Hey, we’ve arrested 800 people.’ You arrested a father, whose wife is going through postpartum depression, and who struggled to have a baby, and he’s the only breadwinner. And now you’ve left her, a U.S. citizen along with her U.S. citizen baby, alone to struggle,” Scarborough said.
Now, Scarborough said her client is likely to be deported to Brazil, and it could be another year before his waiver is processed to possibly allow him back into the country to reunite with his wife and child.
“If ICE had come to him and said, ‘We’re going to terminate this provisional status. We want you to depart the U.S.’ He would have made arrangements to do this very methodically and to make sure that his wife and baby are taken care of, but they didn’t,” Scarborough said. ”They picked him off the street on his way to work, and now it’s caused this added trauma to his family.”
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Action News Jax did reach out to ICE and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for comment on “Operation Tidal Wave” and requested statistics showing how many arrests were made here in Northeast Florida.
We’re waiting to hear back.
In Duval County, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office told Action News Jax it didn’t play a major role in the operation and only a few patrol officers were asked to man an outer perimeter during the execution of a search warrant.
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