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By Jonathan Laday and Eric Cox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration is reconsidering plans for next week’s immigration raid in Chicago after details were released, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said in an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday.
Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the new administration has yet to make any decisions. “We are looking at this flow and will take a decision based on this leak,” he added.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials and activists have said the Trump administration will start the spills in several U.S. cities as soon as it takes office on Monday, with Chicago considered to be the first location.
Dulce Ortiz, president of the Illinois Immigrant and Immigrant Rights Coalition, told Reuters that up to 200 ICE agents were expected to begin raids in the Chicago area at 5 a.m. on Monday, to arrest people heading to work or starting their day.
The performance was expected to continue for several days, she said. An ICE spokeswoman referred questions to Trump’s transition team, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Agents will also conduct raids in New York and Miami, Reuters reported on Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that ICE will conduct a week-long operation in Chicago with hundreds of agents.
Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Saturday that initiating mass deportations, a campaign promise, would be high on his agenda. But he declined to say which cities were targeted and when the evacuations would begin.
“It’s going to start very quickly,” Trump said. “We need to get criminals out of our country.”
Homan himself appeared to confirm the raids earlier on Saturday, telling Fox News that “targeted enforcement operations” would quickly pursue the 700,000 immigrants in the U.S. illegally and under deportation orders. He also pointed out that the effort will be carried out in different cities.
“President Trump has been clear from day one … he’s going to secure the border and he’s going to do the deporting,” Homan told Fox News before Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Homan said the agency carefully planned the operation and identified certain individuals.
“The entire target of this operation is well planned and the entire team will be there for the safety of the officers,” he said.
Asked how the jailing process would fare in sanctuary cities that have pledged not to use city resources for federal immigration raids, Homan said sanctuary city policies are “tragic.”
As for targeted individuals already in local jails, he said the cities’ stance poses a threat to public safety. Cities “release that public safety risk into the community…. And (ICE) forces officers into communities,” Homan said.
They urge the government officials of those cities to support the attack on immigration, but we can’t do this without their help and they can’t stop us.
