ICE to launch migrant raids Sunday
New York, Chicago, Houston among up to 10 cities where arrests are planned
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 and turmoil within his administration over the use of aggressive enforcement tactics aimed at curtailing migration levels at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump and administration officials had previously said that 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. While it was unclear if 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,” Trump told reporters in Washington as he boarded Marine One. “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. ICE officials have said they do not publicly discuss law enforcement operations before they occur — secrecy is a key component — and they have noted that they regularly conduct enforcement waves as part of their general mission.
The former DHS official said the 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.
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. 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.