Immigration raids that were to begin in Chicago shortly after Donald Trump is sworn in as president are being reconsidered after the plans for a sweep in Chicago to net 300 illegal alien criminals leaked to the media late in the week.
“We’re looking at this leak and will make a decision based on this leak,” Border Czar Tom Homan said. “It’s unfortunate because anyone leaking law enforcement operations puts officers at greater risk.”
Indeed, Homan is reconsidering the raid out of an abundance of caution for the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” he said. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines. Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.”
Mr. Homan has a very bad memory. He gave a speech in Chicago at a local Republican Christmas Party last month and told the crowd that mass deportations would begin "right here in Chicago."
“Chicago’s in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks,” Homan said to cheers.
Homan threatened to arrest Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson if he interfered with the enforcement action. Nothing would give more pleasure to Johnson, who needs a political boost given he's the most unpopular mayor in Chicago's history. Johnson would love to be able to portray himself as an anti-Trump martyr.
Agencies that fall under the Department of Homeland Security umbrella, such as Enforcement and Removal Operations, which handles deportations, and Homeland Security Investigations, have been put on "alert" by the incoming administration, officials with knowledge of the plan told ABC News.
Although field teams have not been given specific details about what next week will hold, federal agents assigned to the region were asked to prepare cases and operations that were "ready to go," the officials said.
The immigration raid plans were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, who cited multiple sources that say the incoming administration is planning a "large-scale immigration raid" in Chicago next week.
Different sources claim the Chicago raid is still on, while others say it's off. This uncertainty is being encouraged by law enforcement who believe that making illegal aliens fear they will be deported will result in many of them "self-deporting." This kind of psychological pressure is already affecting border crossings. as the New York Times reports that Trump's threatened crackdown has resulted in the border being "already quiet." Compared to December 2023, when 250,000 people were arrested for illegally crossing the border, just 47,300 arrests were made last month.
Mexican immigration official Enrique Serrano Escobar says, “The flow of migration from the south of Mexico toward the border has diminished in the last few months."
"There is no crisis,” he said of Ciudad Juárez. “There is no problem.”
Homan is focused on getting criminal illegal aliens out of the country. "ICE is finally going to do their job. We’re going to take the handcuffs off of ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens. That’s what’s going to happen," he said.
Some local politicians want to cooperate with ICE, believing that targeted raids to capture criminal illegals would be better than sweeps that might pick up legal residents and even citizens.
Chicago City Council members Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares, both Democrats, sought to pass a measure Wednesday that would have allowed police to work with ICE to deport some criminals.
Lopez did not respond to an interview request, but in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, he said that helping federal agents detain criminals could help protect other undocumented immigrants from harm.
“Would it not keep thousands more safe from being collateral captures of the Trump administration?” he wrote. “I believe so. So does Homan. That is exactly what he stated to me when we met in December.”
I think mass deportation supporters are overestimating what kind of dent can be made in the number of illegals in the U.S. Finding them will be very difficult. ICE cannot walk up to a random person and ask for proof of citizenship. As a political concept, mass deportation helped win Trump the election.
It's another story as a practical matter.
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