Trump Touted These ICE Arrests. Half Were Already in Prison.

More than two decades ago, El Mansouri and other masked men burst into a family’s home in Oklahoma City. As they pointed guns at the heads of the parents and demanded money, the couple’s six-year-old son crawled under a kitchen cabinet and called 911.

“They’ve got a gun. I’m scared,” the boy told the operator, according to the Oklahoman. “Please come.”

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, state records show that the Republican governor of Oklahoma commuted El Mansouri’s sentence of more than 100 years to time served so the federal government could deport him to Morocco. Immigration enforcement agents took him into custody Feb. 5. The next day, the White House touted the arrest on social media and claimed that the administration’s actions “make America safe again.”

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The Trump administration has roared into cities and towns over the past two months, often with cameras and celebrity live-streamers in tow, to arrest thousands of immigrants they say pose a threat to Americans. Trump said officers are “achieving the great liberation of America” from criminals; his border czar, Tom Homan, said the arrests are making neighborhoods safer; and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has taken credit for getting “these scumbags off of American streets.”

The Department of Homeland Security said on March 13 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested approximately 33,000 immigrants in U.S. cities and towns since Trump took office, but officials will not release all their names or details about them, such as where they were arrested or specific criminal histories.

The Post’s findings mirror a national dataset posted by the Deportation Data Project, a repository obtained through public-records requests that shows that a similar percentage of the nearly 17,000 immigration arrests made during the same time period were already in jail, contrary to the Trump administration’s assertions that they were making most arrests in American communities. {snip}

Among the arrests the White House highlighted:

• Ever Villafañe Martinez, who had been in federal prison since 2009. The onetime drug kingpin from Colombia was convicted 15 years ago of conspiracy to funnel cocaine into the United States through Mexico and sentenced to life in prison. The White House announced his arrest in February, disclosing that his punishment was reduced to 240 months, and he was taken into immigration custody to be deported. As of Wednesday, two months after his arrest, he remained in a Florida immigrant detention center, according to the agency’s website.

• Yared Mekonnen, who was arrested inside a federal prison days after Trump took office. The former taxi driver was sentenced to nine years in prison for the sexual assault and attempted kidnapping of an intoxicated female passenger in D.C. in 2017. That sentence was shortened because of good conduct, and upon release, he was expected to register as a sex offender and remain under U.S. government supervision. Instead, he was arrested by federal immigration officers in New Orleans so he could be deported to Ethiopia, which in 2020 was among more than 20 nations that did not always cooperate with deportations. If he can’t be deported, officials would probably be required to release him into the United States. He remained in ICE detention Wednesday in Louisiana.

• Carlos Sosa Horellana, who was in the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Virginia, after an arrest in September for assault charges. Sosa Horellana has been deported twice before, illustrating a point often made by advocates for victims that deportation is not the equivalent of a lengthy prison sentence. Nearly two decades ago, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old girl in Richmond. He served only two years, as the judge suspended most of his sentence because he “will be deported to Honduras,” records show. He returned to Virginia and is facing charges for illegally reentering the country, after being convicted of an aggravated felony, and failing to register as a sex offender.

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Administration officials said the arrests are part of more than 100,000 immigration and border arrests during Trump’s 70 days in office, with a similar number of removals. Officials did not comment on the individual cases. ICE acknowledged that it routinely arrests criminals inside jails and prisons as well as out in communities. But it has not responded to questions about its handling of individual cases or why it has not released a full list of those arrested.

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Historically, immigration enforcement officers have arrested most immigrants for deportation inside prisons and jails because they are the easiest and safest places to find criminals, their top priority for removal. Whether an immigrant is in the country illegally or legally, committing a violent crime is usually grounds for removal no matter who is the president. Even some states with “sanctuary” policies to protect some immigrants from deportation, such as New York and California, cooperate to deport serious criminals.

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Many of those featured in orange boxes on the White House’s social media accounts had been deported before, some multiple times.

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There is also the risk that ICE will be unable to carry out the deportations. Some countries do not take their citizens back because they cannot verify a detainee’s citizenship or because of tense diplomatic relations. The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that ICE cannot detain people forever and must release those they cannot deport.

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