By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
ICE agents arrested dozens of Chaldeans in metro Detroit on Sunday, leading to a standoff with protesters.
Witnesses and immigration advocates said roughly 40 Chaldeans Christians, most of whom have a criminal record, were detained.
If they are sent back to Iraq, it “is like a death sentence,” Martin Manna, an Iraqi-American Christian advocate who is president of the Chaldean Community Foundation based in Sterling Heights, told the Detroit Free Press.
On Sunday night, dozens of protesters briefly blocked the bus where the detainees were placed.
At the ICE Headquarters in Detroit following massive raids this morning. pic.twitter.com/fHIa7Uh5tt
— Solidarity & Defense (@SolidarityDef) June 12, 2017
Metro Detroit is home to the second largest Chaldean population in the U.S.
ICE declined to comment on specifics of the arrests.
“ICE regularly conducts targeted enforcement operations during which additional resources and personnel are dedicated to apprehending removable aliens,” spokesman Khaalid Walls said in a statement Sunday evening.
“The focus of these targeted enforcement operations is consistent with the routine, targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis.”
