By Jonathan Landay and Eric Cox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration is reconsidering plans for immigration raids in Chicago next week after details leaked, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan told The Washington Post in an interview on Saturday.
The new administration “has not yet made a decision,” Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, according to the report. “We are looking at this leak and will make a decision based on this leak,” he added.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials and human rights activists had said Trump’s administration would launch raids in several U.S. cities almost immediately after he took office on Monday, with Chicago being considered as the likely first location.
Dulce Ortiz, president of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told Reuters that up to 200 ICE agents were expected to launch raids in the Chicago area at 5 a.m. on Monday, targeting people on their way to work or at the start of their day to catch.
Enforcement is expected to take several days, she said. An ICE spokesman referred questions to the Trump transition team, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters reported on Friday that agents would also conduct raids in New York and Miami. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that ICE would conduct a weeklong operation in Chicago with potentially hundreds of agents.
Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Saturday that initiating the mass deportations he promised during the campaign will be a top priority. However, he declined to name the target cities or when the deportations would begin.
“It will start very quickly,” Trump said. “We have to drive the criminals out of our country.”
Homan himself appeared to confirm the raids earlier Saturday, telling Fox News that “targeted enforcement actions” would move quickly against some of what he said are 700,000 migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and under deportation orders. He indicated the effort would take place in multiple cities.
“President Trump has made it clear from day one that he will secure the border and carry out the deportation operation,” Homan told Fox News ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Homan said the agency carefully planned the operation and identified specific people for enforcement.
“Every objective of this operation is well planned and the entire team will be there for security reasons,” he said.
Asked how detention measures would be received in so-called sanctuary cities that have pledged not to use city resources for federal immigration raids, Homan said the sanctuary city policy was “unfortunate.”
In the case of those affected who are already in local jails, the cities’ stance poses a threat to public safety, he said. Cities would “release this public safety threat back into the community … and force (ICE) officers into the communities,” Homan said.
He called on officials in those cities to help with the deportation raids, but added: “We will do this, with or without their help. They won’t stop us.”
