Donald Trump’s incoming presidential administration plans to launch a large immigration raid in Chicago the day after he takes office, according to unnamed officials talking to various media outlets.
Federal immigration officers will target more than 300 people, focusing on those with histories of violent crimes, one official told the Associated Press, marking Trump’s initial attempt toward fulfilling his campaign promise of large-scale deportations.
The operation will be concentrated in the Chicago area, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because plans have not been made public. Arrests are expected all week.
News that Chicago has emerged as the earliest target city in the expected crackdown from the incoming Republican president was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, citing four people familiar with planning.
The raid, expected to start on Tuesday, would last all week, the newspaper said, adding that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) would send between 100 and 200 officers to carry out the operation.
Ice and the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. But a source with knowledge of the incoming administration’s plans previously told Reuters that Ice would intensify enforcement across the country but that there would not be a special focus on Chicago or a 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, said at an event in Chicago that the administration was “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.
Homan then told Fox News that Chicago will be one of many places across the country where federal authorities plan to make arrests.
“We’re going to take the handcuffs off Ice and let them go arrest criminal aliens, that’s what’s going to happen,” Homan said. “What we’re telling Ice, you’re going to go enforce the immigration law without apology. You’re going to concentrate on the worst first, public-safety threats first, but no one is off the table. If they’re in the country illegally, they got a problem.”
Operations billed as targeted raids often result in more of a dragnet effect, however, where residents without any kind of criminal record who happen to be undocumented are swept up and put under threat of deportation, and even many who are living and working in the US legally are held for hours or days after being rounded up alongside others.
Trump told NBC News on Saturday that mass deportations remain a top priority. He didn’t give an exact date or city where they’ll start, but he said they would begin soon.
“It’ll begin very early, very quickly,” he said, adding: “I can’t say which cities because things are evolving. And I don’t think we want to say what city. You’ll see it firsthand. …
“We have to get the criminals out of our country. And I think you would agree with that. I don’t know how anyone could not agree.”
Immigration was at the center of Trump’s campaign in the lead-up to the 5 November 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.
Immigrants and groups advocating for them have been preparing to throw up legal roadblocks to mass deportation.
Trump has often been critical of Chicago, which has some of the country’s strongest protections for people in the country without legal status.
The nation’s third-largest city became a so-called sanctuary city in the 1980s, limiting how police can cooperate with federal immigration agents. It has strengthened those policies several times since, including after Trump first took office eight years ago.
The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and first-term Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, have said they won’t back off those commitments.
Homan blasted top Democratic leaders in the state during a visit to the Chicago area last month.
“The reality is that, I think there has been a level of fear since Election Day,” Brandon Lee, a spokesperson for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said on Saturday. “We were always operating as though Trump was going to target Chicago and Illinois early in his administration.”
Advocates have been working to inform immigrants of their rights, and creating phone trees to notify people about where and when officers are making arrests. Officers typically work without warrants that entitle them to forcibly enter a home.
“We’re just trying to be as ready as we can,” Lee said. “We’re never going to know all the details [of Ice operations]. But for members of the community, knowing their rights is empowering.”
Jesus García and Ramirez, Democratic members of Congress, urged immigrants in Chicago to remain calm and exercise their rights, particularly to remain silent and refuse to allow officers into their homes without warrants.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting
