It all went down Thursday morning before the bad guys even had a chance to wipe the sleep from their eyes. Federal agents hit before sun up. They were looking for some of the world’s most dangerous criminals, and they found some.
"They come. They leave their country,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Joe Carvajal. “They cause crimes in our country. It's something that we in law enforcement don't like."
Carvajal is part of an elite group of I.C.E officers assigned to the Fugitive Operations Team out of Miami. Their job: to locate, arrest and remove fugitive aliens from the United States that are convicted criminals and in the states illegally.
“Obviously, it's better to grab them outside their homes,” Local 10 Crime Specialist John Turchin asked Field Office Director for I.C.E, Marc Moore while on route to nabbing a wanted criminal. “Whenever possible,” answered Moore. “When you go to a home you're really kind of at a disadvantage. They (the criminal) know the lay of the land. They know what's in the house. We don’t.”
Last year, these teams arrested more than 40,000 fugitive aliens.
Today, the Miami team added to those numbers. It picked up three fugitives. One is wanted for a murder in Chile. Another was arrested for Child Abuse and Domestic Violation by Strangulation. The third was grabbed for a variety of crimes out of Nicaragua.