It’s not as if President Trump and the Attorney General haven’t been telegraphing their punches when it comes to questions of illegal immigration. But all the warnings in the world don’t seem to be helping illegal aliens – particularly those who have run into additional trouble with the law – avoid capture and deportation in record numbers. That happened again this week as ICE pulled off another highly successful operation in the Garden State. New Jersey residents now have more than one hundred fewer illegal aliens roaming around, most of them with serious criminal records.

The Free Beacon picked up the story yesterday following an agency press conference. This was nothing but an unmitigated success.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced Tuesday the arrest of 101 illegal immigrants, targeting criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants, and immigration violators, and including immigrants convicted of drug- and child-pornography-related offenses.

The arrests were the product of a five-day operation in New Jersey, spearheaded by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). Among those arrested, 88 percent were convicted criminals, and 80 percent had prior felony convictions.

ICE put out their own press release with the full details of those who are soon to be either leaving for home or heading to prison, and they include plenty of gang members.

These individuals were arrested in the following counties in New Jersey: Atlantic (2), Bergen (6), Burlington (7), Camden (11), Cumberland (3), Essex (14), Hudson (15), Mercer (6), Middlesex (11), Monmouth (3), Morris (1), Passaic (9), Somerset (4), and Union (6) and the following counties in New York: Kings(1), New York (1), and Suffolk (1). They range from age 20 to 71 years old and all were previously convicted of a variety of offenses. Some of the convictions included sexual assault on a minor, child abuse, possession of narcotics, distribution of narcotics, robbery, trespassing, DUI, fraud, possession of child pornography, domestic violence, battery, receiving stolen property, theft, possession of a weapon, burglary, larceny, aggravated assault, aggravated assault on law enforcement, assault by auto, shoplifting, invasion of privacy-recording sexual act without consent, resisting arrest, endangering the welfare of a child, and illegal reentry.

Rape, assault, drug dealing, child pornography… they really ran the full gamut. Other operations taking place at the same time, particularly in Baltimore, targeted members of MS-13 and other gangs, removing drugs and illegal weapons from circulation. During comments delivered in Charm City, Jeff Sessions reminded everyone that sanctuary city policies were making law abiding citizens less safe and making it more dangerous for immigration officials to do their jobs. But that wasn’t going to slow them down.

There was also a less than subtle reminder that even illegal aliens who haven’t been convicted of any additional crimes would not be “safe” from detention and deportation if they were caught up in a sweep. We’ve arrested more than 300,000 illegal aliens just in 2017 and enforcement efforts are only going to increase if new funding requests for ICE and the Border Patrol are approved.

With so much dismal news eating up the front pages these days, it’s nice to see some positive progress on at least one front.