President Trump has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct a mass roundup of migrant families that have received deportation orders, an operation that is likely to begin with predawn raids in major U.S. cities on Sunday, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans.
The “family op,” as it is referred to at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, is slated to target up to 2,000 families in as many as 10 U.S. cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and other major immigration destinations, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the law enforcement operation.
Acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan has been urging ICE, an agency within his department, to conduct a narrower, more targeted operation that would seek to detain a group of about 150 families that were provided with attorneys but dropped out of the legal process and absconded.
McAleenan has warned that an indiscriminate operation to arrest migrants in their homes and at work sites risks separating children from their parents in cases where the children are at day care, summer camp or friend’s houses. He also has maintained that ICE should not devote major resources to carrying out a mass interior sweep while telling lawmakers it needs emergency funding to address the crisis at the U.S. border.
Trump has been determined to go forward with the family operation after tweeting Monday that the immigration raids were coming next week as a first step toward his pledge for “millions” of deportations. The White House has been in direct communication with acting ICE director Mark Morgan and other ICE officials, circumventing McAleenan, three officials said.
ICE spokeswoman Carol Danko declined to discuss the operation, saying only that “as a law enforcement agency, ICE’s mission is to uphold the rule of law; operations targeting violators of immigration laws are not only standard practice, but within the statutory authority prescribed by Congress.”
DHS and White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.
ICE has been preparing agents and equipment for the operation, which is expected to unfold across several days starting Sunday morning, the officials said. Discussions about the scope of the operation continued Friday at ICE, DHS and the White House, two officials said.
The agency is planning to use hotel rooms as temporary staging areas to detain parents and children until all the members of a family are together and ready for deportation. Officials also acknowledge that they might arrest individuals they cannot immediately deport — known as “collateral arrests” — and likely will release those people with ankle monitoring devices.
As news of the looming raids reached the Democratic-run cities on the ICE list, some local and state officials blasted the Trump administration and said they would not provide police support.
The Los Angeles Police Department released a statement Friday saying LAPD is aware of upcoming ICE actions “beginning this Sunday,” that would be directed toward individuals who have been issued final deportation orders, and LAPD Chief Michel Moore told reporters Friday that ICE has 140 targets in the area.
“The Department is not participating or assisting in any of these enforcement actions,” the LAPD statement said. “The Department has reached out to various community stakeholders regarding the reported ICE enforcement actions, reiterating that members of this Department will not be participating. We are committed to protecting the public through meaningful relationship building and community partnerships.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James assailed Trump’s plan for mass deportation raids, saying that the president’s “use of migrant families and asylum seekers as political punching bags is a despicable act of racism and xenophobia that is antithetical to our basic human values.”
“This is an immoral and unconscionable act by a president and an administration hellbent on dividing our country, and, as New York’s top law enforcement officer, I can assure New Yorkers we will do everything in our power to fight back against these inhumane policies,” James said in a statement.
Morgan, deputy ICE director Matt Albence and others are eager to begin the operation despite the risk of public backlash against the agency after calls to “Abolish ICE” intensified in the wake of the administration’s failed “zero tolerance” crackdown last year that separated more than 2,700 children from their parents.