It was mid-afternoon when Mario Vidrio,
an immigration enforcement agent assigned to the Escondido Police Department's
Gang Task Force, responded to a call involving an unsafe lane change on one of
Escondido, Calif.'s major thoroughfares. He didn't know that this traffic stop
was going to help him take a dangerous criminal off the streets of southern
California.
When Vidrio arrived at the scene, the
subject did not have any identification, and when questioned, stated that he
was a citizen of Mexico who was illegally in the United States. Vidrio
immediately began conducting record checks, but several of them returned
negative results. It wasn't until Vidrio transported the individual to back to
the Escondido Police Department and ran his fingerprints against a series of
databases that he received a positive result. The San Diego County Sheriff's
Department had issued a $600,000 felony warrant for the arrest of this
individual. He was charged with child molestation and had previously been
deported.
This scenario is not unique. ICE's
partnerships with local law enforcement agencies in northern San Diego Country
have resulted in the arrest of more than 1,000 criminal aliens and immigration
violators over the last two years.
The majority of these arrests occurred
in Escondido, where nearly 800 individuals have been taken into custody since
ICE and the Escondido Police Department launched Operation Joint Effort in May
2010. Operation Joint Effort helps the two agencies leverage resources to
identify and arrest criminal aliens, fugitive aliens and aliens who have illegally
returned to the United States after having been removed.
Robin Baker, field office director for
the Enforcement and Removal Operations office in San Diego, is proud of the
1,000 arrests, but knows there is more work to do.
"This milestone clearly shows that our
collaborative efforts with local law enforcement to improve public safety are
having an impact," he said. "These partnerships have increased the
number of potentially dangerous deportable criminals being removed from our
communities and ultimately from our country."
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