One month after pledging to focus on deporting the most serious criminal immigrants, the Obama administration says it has rounded up almost 3,000 criminals. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said Wednesday they have arrested 2,901 criminal immigrants in the seven-day operation across all 50 U.S. states. All the people arrested had criminal convictions. More than 1,600 had felony convictions, including manslaughter, attempted murder, and drug trafficking. "The results of this targeted enforcement operation underscore ICE's ongoing commitment and focus on the arrest and removal of convicted criminal aliens and those that challenge our nation's immigration system," ICE Director John Morton said in a statement. The arrests came a month after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that immigration officials would focus enforcement efforts on serious criminals and delay deportation cases for most non-criminal immigrants who do not pose a threat to public safety or national security.
