By Michael Hill
Correspondent
5:45 this morning, Homeland Security’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers are briefed on their first target of the day.
“Keep in mind I cant stress enough that this guys going to be a fighter,” said an officer.
They roll out to Roselle’s West Fifth Avenue, where they find the neighbors going through their early morning routine across from a rooming house for sale.
Their target lives here so they watch and wait. They hope for and rely on superior intel.
This went like clockwork?
“It did. They’re not always like that. You know intel, when it’s good, it’s good. This one worked very well in that case,” said ICE Assistant Field Office Director Kenneth Genalo.
Their target’s ride to a car wash job arrives just before 7:30. The target strolls toward it. Officers activate their strobe lights and surround and block the ride. They move in and handcuff the 29-year-old man. The surprise is the officer’s advantage.
“The surprise that he had coming out, he’s figuring he’s just going to work at that time, he doesn’t expect anything to go on. So it gives my staff, my officers the advantage as opposed to going in the residence where he’s more comfortable and might have weapons or different areas where he can hide. Situations to that effect he might have friends. It’s a lot easier to grab him like that. It’s a lot safer for my staff but like I said it doesn’t always go that way,” Genalo said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the man has a juvenile record and, more recently, convictions for sexually assaulting his stepchildren and assaulting a police officer. A textbook “take down” of a parolee who recently appeared on ICE’s radar for allegedly over staying his 90-day visa granted when he came from Uruguay in 2003.
ICE declines to release the man’s name but tells us it will pursue deporting him because he’s a Priority 1 case — its highest level, a threat to society.
ICE says last year, 90 percent of its 3,000 removal cases were for Priority 1 targets.
“The whole idea of this is public safety. You want to make sure that these people who are at large in our community are and not supposed to be in this country are placed in front of a judge to be removed from the United States because of the public safety threat that they do pose to our community,” Genalo said.
And some succeed to the U.S. for varying lengths of time. Time they may spend looking over their shoulder for Genalo.
“A lot of them have that notion in the back of their head that eventually maybe one day it will catch up to them but they usually don’t know it’s ‘that’ day,” said Genalo.
Genalo commands four to five teams and a slew of officers embedded with other agencies.
While Genalo and a team engage in a waiting game for one target, another team’s putting the cuffs on someone elsewhere.
“These are the people judges typically order removed from the United States,” Genalo said.
Genalo’s teams do this several times a week because ICE asks how can you have a safe community with repeat offenders who aren’t even supposed to be here?