Donald Trump’s incoming US presidential administration plans to launch a large immigration raid in Chicago the day after he takes office, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing four people familiar with planning.
The raid, expected to start on Tuesday, will last all week, the newspaper said, adding the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will send between 100 and 200 officers to carry out the operation.
Trump’s transition team did no immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. But a source with knowledge of the incoming administration’s plans said ICE will intensify enforcement across the country and there will not be a special focus on Chicago or surge of personnel there.
“We’re going to be doing operations all across the country,” the person said. “You’re going to see arrests in New York. You’re going to see arrests in Miami.”
Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, told an event in the Chicago that the administration is “going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois,” the Journal reported.
“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,” he was quoted as saying.
Immigration was at the center 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 is expected to mobilize agencies across the US 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.