U.S. launches raids on migrants
Arrests were planned in nearly a dozen U.S. cities, but few arrests appeared to happen
Co-ordinated federal raids targeting migrant parents and their children who are in the United States illegally began over the weekend, part of President Donald Trump’s pledge to swiftly enforce deportation orders against thousands of recently arrived migrants who are not eligible to remain in the country.
Only a handful of arrests appeared to take place, and they were reported in only a few cities. That was much different from the nationwide show of force that had originally been planned, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were expected to fan out in unison Sunday morning across immigrant communities in major cities. But authorities said more arrests would follow through the week.
The plans were changed at the last minute because of news reports that had tipped off immigrant communities about what to expect, according to several current and former Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the operation. Instead of a larger simultaneous sweep, authorities made a secondary plan for a smaller and more diffuse scale of arrests rolling out over roughly a week.
The first reports came in Friday and Saturday. In Chicago, a mother was arrested with her daughters, but that family was immediately released under an agreement to be closely supervised, according to a person familiar with the operation.
In New York, two “ICE enforcement attempts” were reported Saturday in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, with a third incident in Harlem, according to the New York Mayor’s Office of Immigration Affairs. “No arrests were made to our knowledge,” the office said in a statement.
An additional operation was reported in Florida.
Immigration authorities planned to continue making arrests throughout the week. They identified at least 2,000 targets of the operation, but may ultimately arrest far fewer. In most such operations in the past, only 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the targets were apprehended.
Because agents cannot legally use force to enter the homes of their targets, they rely on the element of surprise to be successful, suggesting that the current, highly publicized operation could yield an even smaller proportion of arrests.
The operation is one of the first to target not just adults who are living in the country illegally but also parents and children who are part of the recent wave of migrant families that have arrived from Central America and elsewhere on the southern border, many of them seeking asylum from violence in their home countries.
All of those targeted have been issued orders of deportation. Many were ordered deported because they failed to appear in immigration court as directed, though migrant lawyers say that a large number of recent arrivals were not informed of their court dates and did not know where or when to appear.
Arrests were planned in nearly a dozen cities.
The operation was originally scheduled for late June, but it was postponed after harsh opposition from Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates. Trump confirmed Friday that it would go ahead over the weekend.
“They’re going to take people out, and they’re going to bring them back to their countries,” the president said. “Or they’re going to take criminals out, put them in prison, or put them in prison in the countries they came from.”
Millions of people live in the U.S. without documentation, but the plan for the raids was formulated out of Trump’s frustration over the record numbers of migrant families who have been arriving from Central America.