President signals raids on migrants to start Sunday
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said nationwide raids to arrest and deport migrants in the country illegally would begin Sunday in a sweep that immigration officials said could roll out over days, echoing a similar threat last month that was never carried out.
“Nothing to be secret about,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday morning, where he was asked about the plans. He called it “a major operation.”
“It starts on Sunday, and 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.”
The raids have been planned and debated in the Department of Homeland Security for about a month. Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially planned to send agents into communities across the United States on the same day as a coordinated show of force.
But two people familiar with the operation said the agency changed gears after news reports tipped off immigrant communities about the raids.
Raids may begin in some cities Sunday, but local ICE branches could start them either sooner or later over the next few days, officials said.
Many immigrants are likely to file legal appeals, slowing their deportations. And space limitations in family detention centers will prevent ICE from quickly deporting the migrants.
In June, the president tweeted about the operation days before it was scheduled to begin, blindsiding ICE officials and prompting concern over the safety of agents. Asked about the safety of agents Friday, Trump called them “great professionals.”
The planned sweep is expected to take place in nearly a dozen cities. It had been scheduled for late June, but after harsh opposition from Democratic lawmakers, immigrant advocates and homeland security officials, the president postponed it days before it was set to take place.
The planned arrests are a departure for ICE agents, who typically focus on deporting individual adults, particularly those with criminal records, rather than targeting families with children. Federal immigration authorities said they hoped to sweep up at least 2,000 migrants in the country illegally nationwide.
Raids targeting migrant families have happened before and have been known to escalate into emotional scenes. But officials at the Department of Homeland Security who have discussed the operations with reporters in recent weeks said that they were intended to deter migration, with the hope that images of children and parents being hauled out of their homes would discourage others from entering the U.S.