Federal agents will reportedly target aliens with criminal backgrounds during the week-long operation
US President-elect Donald Trump will kick off his deportation drive with a large-scale raid in Chicago one day after his inauguration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Hundreds of immigration officers are expected to take part in the raid.
The raid will begin on Tuesday morning and last all week, with between 100 and 200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers deployed to the city, the newspaper reported, citing four anonymous sources. Officers will target illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds, although anyone present during arrests who entered the country illegally will also be detained, the sources said.
Trump promised on the campaign trail that if elected, he would lead “the largest deportation operation in American history.” In an interview with MSNBC last month, he said he would start by deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes inside the US, before moving on to “people outside of criminals.”
There are thought to be anywhere between 11 million an 35 million illegal immigrants living in the US.
The president-elect has appointed former ICE Director Tom Homan as his ‘border czar’, and tasked him with carrying out the deportations. “We’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois,” Homan said at a Republican dinner in the city last month. “And if the Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside. But if he impedes us, if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien, I will prosecute him.”
Chicago was chosen as the location of the first raid because of its high numbers of illegal immigrants and Trump’s animosity with the city’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, the Wall Street Journal’s sources said.
Chicago is a so-called ‘sanctuary city’, meaning the city authorities do not ask about immigration status, and are forbidden from cooperating with federal immigration agencies such as ICE.
Johnson has vowed to keep these policies in place, and on Wednesday, the Chicago City Council sided with him, voting 39-11 against a measure that would have allowed city police officers to work with ICE on immigration cases.
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In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Police Department said that while its officers would not take part in the upcoming raid, they “will not intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing their duties.”
More raids are expected to follow, the newspaper reported, adding that large immigrant centers such as New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and Miami are considered top targets for the Trump administration.
