This archive report was first published on 15 July 2019.
ICE Raids Target Migrant Families ¶
On Sunday, July 14, 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched a nationwide operation to target undocumented migrant families, primarily those from Central America who have been arriving in large numbers since fall. The operation aimed to deport parents and children who are not eligible to stay in the country, with some families facing deportation within months of their arrival.
However, the operation was less extensive than initially planned, with only a handful of arrests reported in a few cities. The authorities had originally planned a nationwide show of force, with ICE agents expected to fan out in unison on Sunday morning across immigrant communities in major cities. But the plans were changed at the last minute due to news reports that had tipped off immigrant communities about what to expect.
Instead of a large simultaneous sweep, the authorities created a secondary plan for a smaller and more diffuse scale of apprehensions to roll out over roughly a week. Individual ICE field offices were given the discretion to decide when to begin the operation.
Reports of ICE activity began on Friday and Saturday, with a mother being apprehended with her daughters in Chicago, but the family was immediately released under supervision. In New York, agents attempted two arrests on Saturday in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, and a third in East Harlem.
One teenager in Passaic, N.J., reported being awakened at 1 a.m. Sunday by a knock on the door from people she believed to be ICE agents. She refused to open the door, and after some persistence, the door-knockers left. However, at 5 a.m., more arrived, surrounding the house with flashlights and banging on the door and window. The family hid with the lights off, and eventually, the agents left again.
Immigrant advocates in targeted regions of the country were surprised to have a relatively uneventful day. In Atlanta, about 30 volunteer 'ICE chasers' had fanned out across the suburbs, but after nearly three hours without any reports of arrests, they returned to the offices of a local advocacy organization for coffee and doughnuts.
Shannon Camacho, a coordinator for the city's rapid response network for immigrants in Los Angeles, said the group's work over the weekend, helping undocumented families prepare for possible detentions, was not wasted. While there have been no mass arrests so far, families are now better prepared for whatever happens in the future.
The immigration authorities planned to continue making arrests throughout the week in at least 10 cities, with at least 2,000 targets identified for the raids. However, typically, only 20 to 30 percent of the targets of ICE enforcement are apprehended, suggesting that the current, highly publicized raids could result in even fewer arrests than usual.
President Trump confirmed on Friday that the operation would go ahead over the weekend, saying, 'They're going to take people out and they're going to bring them back to their countries. Or they're going to take criminals out, put them in prison, or put them in prison in the countries they came from.'
Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told 'Fox & Friends' on Sunday that the operation was intended to enforce the rule of law, saying, 'Those individuals who remain here illegally, especially those who've received due process more than any other nation in the world would provide someone that came here illegally, to include those with final orders, that there are consequences to those that remain here illegally.'
