Trump: ICE raids start Sunday
10 cities said to be targets of sweeps
President Donald Trump said Friday that immigration authorities plan to begin carrying out mass arrests of migrants on Sunday, an announcement that comes after weeks of uncertainty within his administration over the use of aggressive enforcement tactics aimed at curtailing migration levels at the U.S .- Mexico border.
Mr. Trump and administration officials had previously said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was planning an operation to target thousands of migrant families that have received final deportation orders, a carefully coordinated push that was to focus on up to 10 cities across the country. Although it was unclear if Mr. Trump was referring to the planned “family op” or another ICE enforcement wave, a former DHS official with knowledge of the operation said the raids will target about 2,000 families in up to 10 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.
“It starts on Sunday and they’re going to take people out and take them back to their countries, or they’re going to take criminals and put them in prison or put them in prison in the countries they came from,” Mr. Trump told reporters in Washington. “We are really specifically looking for bad players, but we’re also looking for people who came into our country not through a process, they just walked over a line, and they have to leave.”
Department of Homeland Security, ICE and White House officials did not immediately respond to requests to clarify the president’s statements.
The former DHS official said targets of the raids are families with final removal orders “who have not honored the orders.” The government considers it a crime when someone willfully fails to leave the country within 90 days of a final removal order.
Mr. Trump on June 17 tipped off ICE’s “family op” plan by tweeting about it days before it was set to begin. But he suspended the plan that same week after an outcry from Democrats, immigration advocates and members of his own administration who warned that the safety of immigration authorities and the success of their mission could be jeopardized because the operation was divulged publicly.
The president warned that the mass arrests — which he views as a potential deterrent to migrants — would be back on the table if Democrats and Republicans failed to come to agreement on altering the country’s immigration laws. Mr. Trump warned again last week that the raids would occur “fairly soon.”
A senior administration official said earlier this month that the president had been briefed on the most recent operation but did not know the precise details.
“ICE officers work daily with a continued commitment to enforcing our country’s immigration laws and removing criminals from our country,” Thomas R. Decker, the field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York, said last week after ICE assisted U. S. marshals in the extradition of a German man wanted for rape. ICE also said last week that it had deported 37 Cambodian nationals.
DHS and Justice Department officials had planned a family raid operation in late 2018, largely as a show of force to discourage Central American parents from bringing their children to the U. S. border hoping to be released into the country while they await court hearings.
Authorities drew up a target list of families that had received final deportation orders, with thousands of names in up to 10 major cities.
The raids, along with tougher Mexican migration enforcement, are part of a plan to reduce border crossings.
U. S. Customs and Border Protection said earlier this week that Border Patrol agents detained more than 57,000 people who had crossed the border with their families in June — a decline from May, but still more than six times the number of families the U. S. apprehended in June 2018.
Immigration advocates have warned that mass arrests targeting families invariably would result in the separation of some children from their parents, as many immigrant families include both U. S. citizens and individuals who are in the country illegally.
“The upcoming ICE raids are yet another brazen attempt at family separation, a failed and inhumane policy devised to scare immigrants and asylum seekers from seeking refuge in the United States. Trump officials are clear with their intentions to use raids to terrorize families,” Emma Einhorn, the campaign director for MoveOn. org, said Friday.