‘Operation Dirtbag’ Nets 150-Plus Sex Offenders in Florida

DHS announced this week that, in conjunction with state and local law enforcement partners, it had arrested more than 150 aliens who committed sex offenses in Florida. This operation raises a lot of questions, including why ICE wasn’t looking for these guys under the last administration and why so many protestors are standing in the agency’s way today.

Recidivism Rates for Sex Offenders and Violent Offenders

As the DHS press release explains, Operation Dirtbag “targeted child predators, rapists, and violent criminal illegal aliens with convictions including sexual assault of minors, rape, lewd and lascivious conduct, child exploitation, battery, and attempted homicide”.

The Christian faith and Western values that have been hammered into me makes me reluctant to cast aspersions on others; “there but for the grace of God go I” and “never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes”, etc.

That said, I hope we can all agree that child sex offenders, rapists, and killers have transgressed our collective moral code and, consequently, that those among us who have committed such crimes are due special attention from our law enforcement officers — if for no reason than to keep the rest of us safe from such predators.

Official statistics indicate that this particular brand of criminal has a high recidivism rate.

For example, the department’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has reported that researchers who studied “child molesters … found five-, 10- and 15-year sexual recidivism rates based on new charges or convictions of 13 percent, 18 percent and 23 percent, respectively”.

Subsets of that group show even higher rates of reoffending: 23 percent of child molesters studied who targeted boys reoffended in five years; 27.8 percent within 10 years; and more than a third, 35.4 percent within 15 years.

It’s safe to conclude the actual rates of reoffending are higher because of the reluctance of many victims to come forward. Or as OJP explains:

It is important to keep in mind that the recidivism rates observed for child molesters, and for incest offenders particularly, are impacted by underreporting even more so than recidivism rates for other types of sex offenders, as research has shown that child victims who knew their perpetrator were the least likely to report their victimization.

Then there are rapists. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) published a 1998 report that examined 86 men who had been convicted of rape, finding nearly “50 percent of the group had committed some offense by the fifth year out of prison. The recidivism rates for sexual, violent, and any criminal recidivism were 16 percent, 26 percent, and 53 percent, respectively.”

There’s also a May 2019 report from DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) that examined the recidivism rates for sex offenders generally who had been released from state prisons in 30 states in 2005 over the subsequent nine-year period (to 2014).

BJS noted that approximately “two-thirds (67%) of released sex offenders were arrested for any other crime”, and half “had a subsequent arrest that led to a conviction”.

To be fair, that 67 percent re-arrest rate was lower than for other, non-sex-offending criminals (84 percent), but some criminals doing better on the outside than other criminals isn’t anything to crow about, nor should it alleviate concerns.

Then, there’s homicide. The good news is that those who kill once are unlikely to subsequently kill anyone else, but the bad news is that, as the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) explained in January 2019:

Violent offenders recidivated at a higher rate than non-violent offenders. Over 60 percent (63.8%) of violent offenders recidivated by being rearrested for a new crime or for a violation of supervision conditions. This compares to less than 40 percent (39.8%) of non-violent offenders who were rearrested during the follow-up period.

Violent offenders recidivated more quickly than non-violent offenders. Of those violent offenders who recidivated, the median time from release to the first recidivism event was 18 months. Comparatively, the median time from release to the first recidivism event for non-violent offenders was 24 months.

In fact, “violent offenders have higher recidivism rates than non-violent offenders in every Criminal History Category”, though (again to be fair) “the difference in recidivism rates between violent and non-violent offenders is most pronounced in the lower Criminal History Categories”.

Fine, unless you are the subsequent victim in one of those “lower Criminal History Categories”.

The 287(g) Program

The DHS press release makes clear that Florida’s “287(g) partnerships” were a “force multiplier” for ICE’s success in Operation Dirtbag.

That’s a reference to section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), “Performance of immigration officer functions by State officers and employees”, and as ICE’s website explains, its 287(g) program allows the agency:

through the delegation of specified immigration officer duties — to enhance collaboration with state and local law enforcement partners to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of aliens who undermine the safety of our nation’s communities and the integrity of U.S. immigration laws.

In February, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) directed Florida law enforcement entities to expand their memoranda of understanding with DHS in order to better execute immigration enforcement functions in the Sunshine State under section 287(g).

As the governor explained at the time:

By allowing our state agents and law enforcement officers to be trained and approved by ICE, Florida will now have more enforcement personnel deputized to assist federal partners. That means deportations can be carried out more efficiently, making our communities safer as illegal aliens are removed.

Perhaps he’s looked at the criminal recidivism statistics, but in any event all 67 counties in Florida are now signed up under the program, and every county jail there is 287(g)-compliant (a state law requiring all law enforcement agencies with a county detention facility to sign on to the program took effect in 2022).

What’s the Downside?

Not to meddle in Florida’s business, but if state law enforcement is helping ICE rack up gains like in Operation Dirtbag, it sounds like DeSantis has a winning strategy.

What could be the downside for any other state that wanted to follow Florida’s lead and help ICE take alien child sex offenders off the street? While anything is possible in this Republic circa 2025, I’m going to guess that there’s not a big lobby for aliens who engage in “lewd and lascivious conduct” or battery to be allowed to remain.

And yet, the very purpose of street protests at ICE facilities in Chicago, Portland, New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and elsewhere is to keep the agency’s officers off the streets.

Plainly, ICE isn’t targeting “child predators, rapists, and violent criminal illegal aliens with convictions including sexual assault of minors, rape, lewd and lascivious conduct, child exploitation, battery, and attempted homicide” every time its vehicles roll, but sometimes it is, and the other people it’s arresting are deportable for violating the INA or the agency wouldn’t have any reason to go after them.

The Bigger Question

The bigger question, of course, is how long the miscreants arrested in Operation Dirtbag have been in the country without being subject to immigration enforcement.

Some of those 150-plus sex offenders arrested by ICE in conjunction with Florida law enforcement may be recent lawbreakers, but most of them have likely been here for years.

I would ask why the Biden administration failed to arrest them, but I actually know the answer: DHS’s official policy between January 2021 and Inauguration Day 2025 was to only take “enforcement action” against certain criminal aliens, and then only after officers considered specified “aggravating” and “mitigating” factors.

Among those “mitigating” factors were the alien criminal’s “advanced or tender age”, “lengthy presence in the United States”, “military or other public service” (or that of their “immediate family”), as well as any “mental condition that may have contributed to the criminal conduct”.

With due respect, people who commit these sorts of offenses likely have “mental conditions”, but that’s no reason the community as a whole must suffer along with them.

The Biden administration was so set on following this senseless and ridiculous policy that it fought efforts by the states of Texas and Louisiana to force ICE to take criminals into custody all the way to the Supreme Court — where it prevailed, setting the stage for Congress to reverse the Court legislatively in the Laken Riley Act.

Not all aliens here unlawfully are violent criminals, but some are and society is at risk so long as they are in our communities. Thanks to Operation Dirtbag, some of the worst alien criminals are no longer free to re-offend. Kudos to ICE and Florida, but they have a lot more work to do. Misguided protestors should wise up and let them do it.