Immigration activists and members of Detroit’s large Iraqi Christian community recently protested at the city’s U.S. Detention and Deportation Center after Immigration and Customs Enforcement followed through on deportation orders to remove convicted criminals in the country illegally.

About 100 people stood along the fence at the facility on Sunday after they allege ICE arrested at least 40 Iraqi Christians, known as Chaldeans, with criminal records and pending deportation orders, the Associated Press reports.

ICE officials said all of those arrested were convicted criminals, some with a history of murder, rape, and other serious crimes. All of them were also ordered to be deported by an immigration judge and are “ineligible for any form of relief under U.S. law,” according to an ICE statement cited by the news service.

ICE officials did not reveal how many Chaldean criminals were arrested in the sweep, one of the biggest in recent memory, but attorneys for those detained estimate between 90 and 300 were arrested.

The Sunday protests continued on Monday with activists toting signs at the Detroit ICE facility that read “stop deportations, bring the families home,” and “help protect our people,” the Detroit Free Press Reports.

Some also wore “Chaldean lives matter” t-shirts.

“As a result of recent negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq, Iraq has recently agreed to accept a number of Iraqi nationals subject to orders of removal,” ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls told the Free Press.

“As part of ICE’s efforts to process the backlog of these individuals, the agency recently arrested a number of Iraqi nationals, all of whom had criminal convictions for crimes including homicide, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, drug trafficking, robbery, sex assault, weapons violations and other offenses.”

Those arrested were hauled to a detention facility in Youngstown, Ohio, where they were allowed to call their families.

Some of the folks who were arrested came to the U.S. legally, but were ordered to be deported after committing crimes, including 38-year-old father of three Haydar Butris. Butris immigrated to the U.S. legally with his family in 1993 but was busted years later with seven pounds of marijuana.

Another, 50-year-old Daher Al-Mayhi, also came to the U.S. legally, but was sentenced to a year in prison for fraud, which made him eligible for deportation.

Nathan Kalasho, a Chaldean American who operates a charter school in Detroit, contends that Chaldeans have faced genocide in Iraq, and argued that the “minor offenses” committed by members of the community in the U.S. don’t warrant deportation.

Kalasho blamed the “back-door deal” between the U.S. and Iraq for the ICE crackdown and argued that the criminal immigrants have earned the right to stay.

“Who could think that this deal could possibly be good?” Kalasho asked the AP. “Iraq assumes a few hundred former nationals – some of these people have spent nearly their entire lives here and some have committed minor offenses. They’ve paid their debt to society.”

Attorneys representing those arrested argue that the U.S. government is essentially sentencing them to death by sending them back to Iraq, where Christians are a minority.

“We’re sending them to die,” Eman Jajonie-Daman, who is representing 25 of the detained Iraqis, told the Free Press. “How do you justify that? It’s an egregious violation of human rights.”

ICE’s Walls countered that the government does not discriminate against illegal immigrants based on religion, and agents are simply removing criminals with pending deportation orders.

“ICE does not target individuals based on religion, ethnicity, gender or race. ICE’s enforcement actions target individuals who are subject to immigration enforcement,” he said. “These efforts are targeted and lead-driven. ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately.”