ICE agents arrested 58 fugitive aliens and 41 immigration violators during a week-long operation in Dallas, Denton and Lewisville Texas, the Associated Press reports. 22 of the 99 had previous criminal convictions. The arrestees included people from Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, Mexico, Nepal and Nicaragua.
Fugitive aliens are illegal aliens who fail to show up for their immigration hearings, or who disappear after a judge orders them to leave the country. ICE's Fugitive Operations Program was established in 2003 to eliminate the nation's backlog of immigration fugitives. Today, ICE has 95 teams in place across the country.
ICE estimates there are slightly under 560,000 fugitive aliens in the U.S. now, a decrease of more than 34,000 since October 2007.
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Updated: Wed, Jul 5th 2017 @ 2:20pm EDT