Nearly 800 illegal immigrants were arrested in Florida last week during the first four days of a multi-agency effort between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and Florida law enforcement agencies.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, ICE shared pictures from last week’s “Operation Tidal Wave,” saying, “In a first-of-its-kind partnership between state and federal partners, ICE Miami and Florida law enforcement arrested nearly 800 illegal aliens this week during the first four days of #OperationTidalWave — a massive, multi-agency, immigration enforcement crackdown.”
Fox News reported that Operation Tidal Wave remains ongoing in Florida as state law enforcement officials continue to partner with ICE to execute President Donald Trump’s deportation goals.
According to Fox News, information obtained by the outlet regarding the mass arrest of illegal immigrants in Florida showed that law enforcement officials arrested alleged MS-13 gang members, alleged 18th Street gang members, a convicted murderer from Colombia, and a Russian wanted by Interpol for manslaughter.
According to ICE’s website, “Operation Tidal Wave” falls under the agency’s 287(g) authority, which allows ICE officials to “delegate to state and local law enforcement officers the authority to perform specified immigration officer functions under the agency’s direction and oversight.”
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“I think the main reason why this operation is significant is because it’s the first of its kind,” Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told ABC News. “It’s one that not only we’ve been doing what we have, but we have surged all our federal partners together along with Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement [and] Removal Operations, which are all the enforcement arms of ICE, but we’re also using all our 287(g) partners in the state of Florida. We’re using state, local and county law enforcement agencies to assist us in our operations.”
“So this is one of the first large-scale missions we’ve done like this ever,” Lyons added. “We brought a ‘whole the government’ approach with cooperative jurisdictions that want to help ICE secure communities in neighborhoods and remove public safety threats from our neighborhoods.”
Lyons explained that state troopers, county sheriffs, and local police officials are acting as the “eyes and ears” of federal immigration enforcement officials. The acting ICE director said local law enforcement officials “encountered these criminal aliens out and about during their regular duties, and they’re able to go ahead and identify those public safety threats for us.”
