Anxious immigrants await ICE deportation raids

MIAMI – As the sun rose over the East Coast on Sunday, immigrants were relieved to find that the federal raids promised by President Donald Trump had not yet materialized.

The president said the raids would start Sunday, leading many to worry that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would follow their usual procedure of conducting predawn raids to round up immigrants. But as night turned to day, immigration attorneys and advocates around the country said they had not heard any reports of ICE activity.

“All quiet so far,” said Melissa Taveras of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which is running a hotline for immigrants but had received only a few calls Sunday morning from immigrants asking about their legal rights if ICE agents arrived.

In Baltimore, the only noise around an ICE field office in downtown came from a fountain at the center of a plaza. No agents scurrying about, no immigrants being brought in, just a few people asleep on benches outside.

In Chicago, the street outside a detention facility was closed to regular traffic, but no government vehicles were seen coming or going Sunday morning. The only activity near the site was a group of 50 protesters across the street chanting “Abolish ICE” in English and Spanish.

“We’ve not heard anything,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said on MSNBC shortly after 9 a.m.

ICE officials remained quiet about their plans, and Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, refused to say whether the raids had started.

“I can’t speak to operational specifics and won’t,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

That left immigrants and the advocates who have mobilized around the country to protect them unsure about when, or if, the raids would start.

Advocates have warned that the raids would tear apart families and sow further mistrust of the government. In preparation, advocates staffed hotlines, printed fliers with legal information and activated networks of volunteers to monitor and document the raids.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Friday that the city’s police will not cooperate with ICE operations and that the city was gearing up to protect immigrants.

“If you want to come after them, you’re going to have to come through us,” she said.

In Denver and other cities, government human-service workers were on standby to find foster homes for any children left behind if their parents were detained and marked for deportation. In many cases, immigrants who lack legal permission to remain in the U.S. have minor children who are U.S. citizens.

Immigration reform advocates expected that communities around Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco would be targeted in raids expected to last at least through Thursday. Trump said those in the country illegally and with criminal records were to be targeted first.