ICE names man arrested in Bluffton immigration operation last month
Federal officials have identified one of the men arrested during last month’s immigration sweep in Bluffton, but haven’t named any others detained during the operation.
Bluffton resident Jairo Rossel Mejia-Mencia from Honduras was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the May 29 “coordinated operation” in partnership with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, ICE said in a social media post on Saturday.
Mejia-Mencia entered the U.S. unlawfully and was removed “but later snuck back into the country” before being arrested in Bluffton, ICE said. The agency said Mejia-Mencia has a pending criminal charge for unlawful possession of a firearm, but didn’t specify the jurisdiction.
Mejia-Mencia’s reported charge was not found in an online search of Beaufort County court records. An ICE spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about when the charge was applied and in what jurisdiction, and Mejia-Mencia was also not immediately searchable through ICE’s online detainee locator system when searching by name.
The May 29 ICE operation targeted people who had failed to comply with deportation orders, the sheriff’s office previously said. Officials have not said how many were arrested during the operation and have not identified any other detainees, but a video taken from Bluffton’s Myrtle Park Government Center showed about 15 handcuffed men being led out of the building before being loaded onto a white bus in the parking lot.
Immigration agents’ presence in Bluffton last month prompted a June 5 protest outside the government building off Bluffton Parkway, where detainees had been held a week earlier. About 100 protestors showed up, many waving brightly colored signs condemning the actions of ICE under President Donald Trump and the federal 287(g) program that allowed BCSO to participate in the operation.
“Last week, in this building — that belongs to us, the taxpayers; this is our public government building — this building was used to hold at least 17 men by ICE,” Bluffton immigration attorney Aimee Deverall said as she motioned toward the Myrtle Park Government Center during a speech to protestors.
Deverall, who also serves as chair of the Lowcountry Immigration Coalition, said several attendees at an LIC event earlier in the week had family members taken and didn’t know exactly where they were.
“They might know the detention centers, but that’s about it,” said Rev. June Wilkins of Christ Lutheran Church Hilton Head, who organized the event alongside Deverall. “They don’t know how to reach them, they can’t talk to them, they can’t visit them or anything.”
In its statement, ICE said Mejia-Mencia would stay in custody “while the reinstatement of his removal order is processed.”
