Unwelcome

More than 160 foreign nationals, most of them illegal immigrants with criminal records, were arrested in northern Virginia over a three-day enforcement surge involving federal, state and local police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said last week.

The enforcement sweep, conducted between Sunday and Tuesday, ensnared men and women from 32 countries, including eight people who had been convicted of sex offenses, but critics say federal enforcement is still too lax.

Among the arrested suspects, a 49-year-old El Salvadoran man had been previously convicted for hit-and-run, DWI and child neglect. A 39-year-old British man arrested in Madison, Va., had been convicted for aggravated sexual battery of a child. And a 39-year-old Ecuadorian man arrested in Arlington had been convicted for battery, receiving stolen property and statutory rape of a child between 13 and 15 years of age, TBD.com reports.

The arrests came as Gov. Bob McDonnell Virginia announced that state agencies will start vetting the immigration status of job applicants in June, 18 months ahead of schedule. McDonnell said his order to move the effective date for using the e-Verify system from December 2012 to this summer puts the state in compliance with federal law that prohibits businesses from hiring illegal immigrants.

"We are dedicated to the removal of criminal offenders from our country," Morton said, arguing that ICE has removed more illegal immigrants from the country in the last two years than it ever had.

Morton's announcement failed to impress Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, a vocal critic of what he says is lax federal enforcement of immigration law. He called Wednesday's news conference a "dog-and-pony show."

Stewart said the statistics show that ICE routinely fails to detain known illegal immigrants even when they have been convicted of serious crimes, including felonies. He said in Prince William County alone, Prince William authorities have turned over 3,000 criminal aliens to ICE in recent years, and ICE refuses to say whether those people were detained, deported or released.

Stewart suspects the vast majority were released because Prince William police have re-arrested 346 of them.

"This is certainly not enough," Stewart said of the enforcement sweep. "ICE and the federal government will show that they are serious about dealing with criminal illegal aliens when they begin to hold criminal illegals in custody until they are deported."

Of the 163 arrests in the recent enforcement action, roughly 130 were people with criminal records: 85 for felonies and 45 with misdemeanors, Morton said.

"These are not the kind of people we want walking the streets of our Commonwealth," Morton said.

While the enforcement action targeted illegal immigrants with criminal records, more than 30 of those arrested had no criminal convictions but were nevertheless in the U.S. unlawfully, according to ICE. Of those arrested, 60 were in Fairfax County, 37 in Prince William County and 20 in Loudoun County. Smaller numbers were arrested in Arlington County, the city of Alexandria and the outlying counties of northern Virginia.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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