More than two dozen people in ICE custody after sweeping arrests that include suspected MS-13 gang members

Nassau police arrested more than 40 people last week, handing more than half to the U.S. Immigrations & Customs Enforcement agency, including many alleged MS-13 gang members, officials announced on Tuesday.

Over a four-day period last week, police arrested 42 people for alleged crimes ranging from drug and weapons possession, robberies and DWIs. Officials transferred 28 people, who were charged with low-level crimes and would have otherwise been released, to ICE custody.

"If you’re smart, you’ll get out of town. Because in Nassau County, you’re going to be prosecuted, you’re going to be incarcerated, or you’re going to be deported," Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said in a news conference announcing the arrests.

Bryan Flanagan, assistant director of ICE’s New York City field office, said the agency is holding 28 people, mostly from Central America, without bond, and processing their deportations. In five additional cases, the federal agency has issued immigration "detainers," a request from ICE for local law enforcement to share information about specific detainees, police officials told Newsday. This allows ICE to arrest someone after they’ve completed a criminal sentence locally.

ICE has arrested more than 1,600 people on Long Island with prior convictions between Jan. 20 and early August, the agency previously told Newsday. In February, Blakeman joined a list of elected leaders, mostly from Southern states, who've partnered with ICE to allocate 50 local jail cells in East Meadow for ICE to detain people arrested across the region. The agency is reimbursing the county for those cells, where more than 1,400 people have been held since February, Newsday previously reported. Blakeman also deputized 10 local police detectives to help make immigration arrests. They have been trained by ICE but not yet deployed, he has said.

Blakeman has said people arrested for serious crimes will be prosecuted and jailed locally, rather than handed over to ICE. But for smaller offenses, officials have looked to ICE directly.

"They’re not going to go into a cashless bail system and walk out the door ... Now, we turn them over directly to ICE and they get deported," Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said in a news conference Tuesday.

More than half those arrested — 25 people, ranging in age from 18 to 46 — belong to a gang, according to Ryder. Eighteen belong to MS-13, five to the rival 18th Street gang and another two to the Trinitarios gang, police officials said. One minor who police also arrested was handed over to a family member.

The arrests come on the heels of a Nassau jury indicting five men, who prosecutors say are members of MS-13’s Hempstead Loco Salvatruchas gang, on attempted murder charges stemming from two attacks last year.

In one incident during an afternoon soccer game at Kennedy Memorial Park in Hempstead on Oct. 20, one defendant allegedly stabbed someone in the chest, and another is accused of slashing someone in the back, prosecutors said. In another incident on Dec. 18, three of the same defendants from the October stabbing allegedly attacked two people with white pipes and machetes outside the Super Laundromat in Uniondale.