Plans for ICE raids change after heads up

A small number of coordinated federal raids targeting undocumented migrant parents and their children took place over the weekend, the beginning of President Donald Trump’s plan 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.

The plans for the operation 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. Instead of a large simultaneous sweep, the authorities created a secondary plan for a smaller and more diffuse scale of apprehensions to roll out over roughly a week. Individual ICE field offices were given the discretion to decide when to begin, one official said.

The first reports of ICE activity came in Friday and Saturday. In Chicago, a mother was apprehended with her daughters, but the family was immediately released under supervision, according to a person familiar with the operation. Operations were also reported Saturday in New York City and in Florida.

Immigrant advocates in targeted regions of the country who were standing by to support anyone who was arrested were surprised to have a relatively uneventful day.

Sunday morning, about 30 volunteer “ICE chasers” had fanned out across the Atlanta suburbs, where many Latino immigrants live. But after nearly three hours without any reports of arrests, they returned to the offices of an advocacy organization for coffee and doughnuts, saying they would start again Monday morning.

In the Los Angeles area, a dozen churches declared themselves sanctuaries for migrant families, and in Chicago a group of aldermen and activists patroled on bikes to look for immigration authorities.

Many immigrants were hunkered down indoors or went into hiding as far as possible from the addresses that the federal authorities had on file for them.

Immigration authorities planned to continue making arrests throughout the week in at least 10 cities. They had identified at least 2,000 targets but may ultimately arrest fewer. Typically, only 20 to 30% of ICE targets are apprehended. And because agents cannot legally force their way into homes, they rely on the element of surprise to be successful.

All those targeted have been issued orders of deportation, in many cases because they failed to appear in immigration court as directed. 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.

“This is about the rule of law,” Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told “Fox & Friends” on Sunday.