Nine cities are targeted in immigration raids

TUCSON, Ariz. – Immigration raids are expected to begin as early as Sunday in several major American cities, President Donald Trump said.

It’s part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, and the plans have sown fear in migrant communities around the U.S.

The cities targeted are Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco. Each was part of a one-year program that allowed the Department of Justice to fast-track the adjudication of cases through the normally sluggish immigration court system.

Trump initially said “millions” of immigrants would be deported when he stunned immigration officials in midJune by announcing the raids ahead of time, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said the raids would be smaller in scope.

While Milwaukee has not, so far, appeared on the list, local officials and immigrant advocates urged undocumented residents to know their rights if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials knock on their doors.

Milwaukee Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton and 12th District Ald. Jose Perez issued a joint statement critical of the raids and directing residents to the immigrants’ rights page on the American Civil Liberties Union’s website.

“People are being terrorized,” Sam Singleton, spokesman for the advocacy group Voces de la Frontera, said of the raids.

Hamilton and Perez called it a “dreadful state of affairs when our own federal government engages in activity that, frankly, makes it feel more like an external threat than a defender of the common good.”

Hamilton and Perez said the Milwaukee Police Department had not been notified of any planned raids and that the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office has made plain it will not cooperate with ICE raids. The Milwaukee Police Department has not responded to a Journal Sentinel question regarding its policy on assisting ICE.

Five key questions:

Who will be targeted?

The roundups are expected to target about 2,000 migrants, most of whom have been ordered deported, according to Claudia Valenzuela with the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization.

The primary focus is on individuals who have received standing deportation orders after missing court hearings. Immigration judges ordered that they be deported “in absentia.”

Valenzuela said a concern is that, in many instances, the families did not receive court notices, were summoned for nonexistent dates, or didn’t know how to navigate the complex U.S. immigration system.

What happens next?

After ICE officers detain someone, what happens next depends on whether the individual has a deportation order. Ruben Reyes, a board member with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said migrants who have final deportation orders have little recourse.

“They generally are picked up, they get taken to central processing, and then from central processing their ID is verified, their history is verified, their documents are obtained through the consulate so they can be repatriated,” he said.

If someone doesn’t have a deportation order, the person is placed into deportation proceedings, Valenzuela said. Such individuals could be held in immigration detention or released on bond while a judge determines whether they should be deported.

Can they be deported right away?

Deportations from the U.S. depend on the home countries of the migrants. Under binational agreements, Reyes said, deportees from Mexico and Canada can be removed as quickly as the same day of their arrest.

Mexican migrants are sent back to one of 11 repatriation points along the U.S.-Mexico border or flown to Mexico City.

The process is different for countries that don’t share a border with the U.S. The 2,000 targeted migrants likely come mostly from Central American countries, which makes it more challenging to deport them quickly, Valenzuela said. ICE has up to three months to deport someone; on average, it takes one to two months.

What about the children?

In the past, immigration sweeps largely have focused on adults or on businesses, but the raids expected to begin Sunday will include children who traveled with family members to the U.S.

“To proactively go to homes to arrest children, we’ve never seen it in this way,” Valenzuela said. “And as a policy and as an operation, we’ve never seen it.”

Based on what has happened in previous raids and sweeps, he encouraged families to plan so that their children and any property they own are protected.

Is there any last-minute recourse?

Individuals with deportation orders don’t have a right to go before court, Valenzuela said. Their only recourse is to reopen the deportation order, which means asking the court to step in and stop the deportation while the motion is pending.

But under the way the system is set up, Valenzuela added, once there’s a deportation order, it’s difficult to get a court to hear the case.

Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this story.