Handful of arrest attempts reported across the country, including in Chicago and New York.
A small number of coordinated federal raids targeting unauthorized 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. But authorities said more arrests would follow through the week.
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 familiar with the matter. 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 a apprehended with her daughters, but the family was immediately released under supervision, according to a person familiar with the operation.
In New York, ICE agents attempted two arrests Saturday in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, and a third in East Harlem, according to the New York Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. “No arrests were made to our knowledge,” the office said in a statement.
An additional operation was reported 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 a local advocacy organization for coffee and doughnuts, saying they would start again Monday morning.
In Los Angeles, Shannon Camacho, a coordinator for the city’s rapid response network for immigrants, said the group’s work over the weekend, helping unauthorized families prepare for possible detentions, was not wasted. While there have been no mass arrests so far, she said, families are now better prepared for whatever happens in the future.
Camacho also warned against paying heed to speculation on the internet. “We do get a lot of false alarms on social media, and that causes a lot of panic in the community,” she said. “People are afraid to go outside, to go to church, to go to the grocery store, and that’s harmful.”
Immigration authorities planned to continue making arrests throughout the week in at least 10 cities. They had identified at least 2,000 targets for the raids, but may ultimately arrest fewer. Typically, only 20 to 30 percent of the targets of ICE enforcement are apprehended. And because agents cannot legally force their way in to the homes of their targets, they rely on the element of surprise to be successful — suggesting that the current, highly publicized raids could result in even fewer arrests than usual.
The operation is one of the first to target not just adults who are in the country illegally, but parents and children who are part of the recent wave of migrant families who have arrived from Central America and elsewhere on the southern border, many of them seeking asylum from violence in their home countries.
All those targeted have been issued orders of deportation, in many cases because they failed to appear in immigration court as directed. Migrant lawyers said a large number of recent arrivals were not informed of their court dates and did not know where or when to appear.
The operation was originally scheduled for late June, but it was postponed after harsh opposition from Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates. Trump confirmed Friday it would go ahead over the weekend.
“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.”
Those arrested were expected to be held in detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania that are specially equipped to hold families. But because of space limitations, some would probably be booked into hotel rooms until their travel documents could be prepared, ICE officials said. The agency’s goal is to deport the families as quickly as possible.