U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration plans to ramp up nationwide immigration raids shortly after he takes office on Monday, according to a source familiar with the plans.
“We’re going to be doing operations all across the country,” the person told Reuters on Friday. “You’re going to see arrests in New York. You’re going to see arrests in Miami.”
The source was responding to a Wall Street Journal report that the administration plans to launch a large immigration raid in Chicago on Tuesday.
Citing four people familiar with the planning, the newspaper said the Chicago operation would last all week, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sending between 100 and 200 officers to carry out the operation.
The source who spoke with Reuters denied that there was a special effort to move personnel to Chicago.
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the reports of immigration raids’ plans.
Mass Deportations
Immigration was at the centre of Trump’s campaign in the lead-up to the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“Within moments of my inauguration, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said in January 2024.
Trump pledged to limit access to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border and to embark on the biggest deportation effort in American history, which would likely trigger legal challenges and opposition from Democrats in Congress.
He said he will employ the National Guard, and, if necessary, federal troops, to achieve his objective, and he has not ruled out setting up internment camps to process people for deportation.
He also suggested he would revoke the protected legal status or some populations such as Haitians or Venezuelans.
Trump said he will reinstitute the so-called “travel ban” that restricts entry into the United States of people from a list of largely Muslim-dominant countries, which sparked
multiple legal battles during his first term.
Trump is expected to mobilize agencies across the U.S. government to help him deport record numbers of immigrants, Reuters has reported, building on efforts in his first term to tap all available resources and pressure so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate.
(With inputs from Reuters)
