Martin Koste

Abrego Garcia had been ordered to check in at the ICE field office in Baltimore, and his lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told a crowd of supporters that there was concern he wouldn't come back out.

A federal judge ordered ICE not to detain him while a legal motion is pending.

Earlier this year, the administration deported him wrongfully to a prison in his native El Salvador.

Obriga Garcia originally entered the U.S.

illegally but is shielded from being sent to El Salvador.

He also faces criminal charges for human smuggling.

Martin Koste, NPR News.

Federal immigration authorities haven't said how many arrests they've made since this operation started on Wednesday, but volunteer spotters say they haven't seen that many.

Rachel Tabor is with a group that's been teaching people strategies to avoid arrest and deportation.

Tabor says she does worry about a quote, siege situation in which the feds try to outlast the ability of people to stay away from work or school.

The Department of Homeland Security has not said how long the operation will last.

Martin Koste, NPR News, New Orleans.

Criminologists and pollsters will tell you that Americans tend to say that crime is getting worse even in times when crime is actually going down.

That's been true for the last two or three years, but now, for the first time in more than two decades, fewer than half of respondents in Gallup's poll say there's more crime now than last year.

The perception of the seriousness of crime in the U.S.

has dropped among Republicans and Democrats, though Republicans are still more likely than Democrats to see crime as a serious problem.

Perhaps most revealing, only 30 percent of respondents said crime got worse where they live.

That's down from 56 percent last year.

Martin Koste, NPR News.