WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan said on Saturday that targeted operations to detain migrants who are in the U.S. illegally will begin next week, and indicated they would involve several cities.
Asked on Fox News if deportation raids would be launched in multiple cities, including Chicago, Homan said, “I wouldn’t categorize them as raids. There are going to be targeted enforcement operations.”
Asked how these operations would be received in so-called sanctuary cities, which have pledged not to use city resources for federal immigration raids, Homan suggested the incoming Trump administration would target city jails.
“We want to arrest a bad guy in the safety and security of a county jail.”
A source told Reuters on Friday that New York and Miami would be targeted. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would stage a week-long operation in Chicago with potentially hundreds of agents.
Homan, a former acting director of ICE, said the agency was planning its operations carefully.
“They (ICE agents) will know who is possibly in the household, including children … Every target for this operation is well-planned, and the whole team will be out there for officers’ safety reasons.”
Asked when the flights of Trump’s promised mass deportations would begin next week, Homan was not specific.
“We’ve got over 700,000 illegal aliens in the United States with final order removals. President Trump has been clear from day one … he’s going to secure the border and he’s going to have the deportation operation.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Heather Timmons and Rod Nickel)
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