Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan said Sunday the optics were “unfortunate” of an ICE roundup of illegal immigrants at Mississippi food processing plants in the wake of two back-to-back mass shootings.
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” McAleenan noted “these enforcement operations” were planned for “over a year.”
“In terms of the ICE operations, these are enforcement operations that are part of their daily cycle,” he said. “Something like this has been planned for over a year. This is a criminal investigation with 14 federal warrants issued by a judge and ICE had to follow through on that. It was already planned and in motion.”
But later in the interview, he conceded: “The timing was unfortunate.”
McAleenan said “employers are exploiting undocumented workers.”
“These employers are exploiting undocumented workers,” he said. “This is a situation where you have 680 arrests just in this one operation. That just means that those employers are just ignoring the law entirely in what they do.
“That is why a judge gave us a warrant to go after them and this is the middle of an ongoing criminal investigation and we do expect to continue forward towards charges.”
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