The Trump administration is reportedly planning to begin its promised campaign of unprecedented mass deportations with a series of raids in Chicago.
The raids will begin the day after the Republican is inaugurated, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The operation will include as many as 200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and will target scores of migrants, including those with low-level criminal histories that would’ve been deemed low priority by the Biden administration.
Chicago was chosen because of its large immigration population and because of the incoming administration’s public feud with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, sources told the paper.
The Independent has contacted the Trump transition team and ICE for comment.
An estimated 18 percent of Chicago’s more than 2.6 million residents are foreign-born.
In December, incoming immigration czar Tom Homan told a group of local Republicans that the Trump administration deportation program was “going to start right here in Chicago,” and threatened to prosecute Johnson.
“If your Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside,” he reportedly said. “But if he impedes us — if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien — I will prosecute him.”
Johnson, in response, noted that Chicago is a “sanctuary” city which limits the ability of local police to be enlisted to carry out federal immigration enforcement.
“What the Trump administration has called for is for local police departments around the country to behave as ICE agents. In sanctuary cities, that is not permissible,” Johnson told CNN.
“If there is someone here in this country that commits a violent crime and they are undocumented, they are in the hands of the law,” he added. “That is clear.”
Conservatives have long singled out Chicago as a target of criticism over what they see as emblematic issues in large liberal cities, and Texas has sent over 50,000 migrants on buses from the border to the city in protest of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
At the peak, around 15,000 migrants were living in city shelters, though numbers have since fallen considerably.
As The Independent has reported, civil rights and immigrant advocates are warning that the Trump administration plans to “flood the zone” with unprecedented immigration actions, including ending birthright citizenship, restarting family separation, and relying on spurious public health groups to drastically cut asylum.
