Several major cities are expected to be hit by Trump’s immigration authorities soon after the inauguration.
Donald Trump’s top border official says the new Republican administration will launch sweeping operations to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants starting on the U.S. president-elect’s inauguration day on Tuesday.
The new administration so-called “border tsar”Tom Homan told Fox News on Saturday that he would not characterize the expected actions as “raids.”
“There are going to be targeted enforcement operations,” he said, adding that Chicago would be among the cities that see raids soon after Trump takes office for a second four-year term.
Homan also suggested that the Trump administration would target prisons in so-called sanctuary cities that house large numbers of migrants. He said the government wanted to “arrest a bad guy in the safety and security of a county jail.”
Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the agency was carefully plan operations and would know which houses to hit.
While US media reported that Chicago could be struck as early as Tuesday by hundreds of border agents and that New York and Miami could also be targets, he did not comment on the exact timeline of the operation or give further details. .
Homan’s latest comments come a day after he said: “We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them arrest criminal aliens.” » He also announced that there would be a “major raid across the country”.
Just like during his first presidential campaign, Trump pledged to crack down on undocumented immigrants during his second campaign. But there have been disagreements on certain aspects among Republicans, particularly regarding the bill. issuance of H-1B visas.
Trump promised he would launch “the largest national deportation operation in American history” for quickly remove people without saying exactly how many will be affected.
The president-elect said he would reinstate a program to force tens of thousands of asylum-seeking migrants to wait for their hearings in Mexico, reinstate a controversial travel ban on Muslim-majority countries in his first term and end to birthright citizenship for people born in the United States. children of certain non-citizens.
Trump officials have considered how to withhold funds from sanctuary cities that refuse to participate in evictions, even for local officials who argue they don’t have the resources to implement his plan or are concerned about negative effects on their communities.
Immigrant rights groups prepare for repression promised by the new administration, with some US media reporting “self-expulsions” of people who chose not to wait for Trump to forcibly deport them.
Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered in Washington on Saturday to protest Trump’s inauguration, as activists for women’s rights, racial justice and other causes rallied against the new policies that, they say will threaten their constitutional rights during the Republican’s second term.
Some in the crowd wore the pink hats that marked the much larger protest against Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. They marched through downtown in a light rain, past the White House and toward the Lincoln Memorial along the National Mall for the “People’s March”.
Protests against Trump’s inauguration are fewer this time, in part because the U.S. women’s rights movement appears more fractured, many activists say, after Trump’s loss to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November .
