Aliens ask wrong people in van about work

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BALTIMORE -- Federal agents taking a break from an unrelated assignment yesterday arrested 24 illegal aliens at a Fells Point 7-Eleven after the men attempted to solicit "underground" employment from the agents.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were stopped in the convenience store parking lot when the group of Hispanic men approached the agents' unmarked vehicles, ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi said.

Officials said "several" agents were approached, but they declined to say how many.

The agents, members of an ICE fugitive operations team conducting a mission targeting illegal aliens, determined that all 24 men assembled at the store were illegal aliens and brought them to an ICE holding facility in Baltimore, Mr. Raimondi said.

"Fugitive aliens and other immigration-status violators [flout] our laws and threaten the integrity of our immigration system," said John Alderman, acting director of ICE's Baltimore field office. "Although ICE conducts targeted enforcement actions, we will not ignore immigration violations we encounter during the course of doing business."

Of those arrested, 10 were Honduran, eight were Mexican, five were Salvadoran and one was Peruvian, ICE officials said.

Six of the men have criminal records in the United States, eight of the men have failed to comply with final removal orders from an immigration judge and one man had been caught at the border on four occasions, ICE officials said.

The nonprofit immigrant-advocacy group CASA of Maryland called the arrests an "illegal raid" that was beyond ICE's authority.

"Asking a bunch of people about their immigration status is well beyond the confines of a specific warrant," CASA spokeswoman Kim Propeack said.