Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said 956 people were arrested in Sunday’s nationwide immigration crackdown, the most since President Donald Trump returned to power.
A number of federal agencies with newly expanded detention powers were involved in raids in a number of cities, including Chicago, Newark, and Miami.
Trump came to power with the mass deportation of illegal immigrants as a central campaign promise.
ICE says his predecessor, Joe Biden, carried out an average of 311 immigrant deportations each day, the majority of them of individuals who had committed crimes.
Since taking office, President Trump has taken 21 executive actions to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, was in Chicago to oversee operations there, and his federal crackdown has frustrated Democratic leaders.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson acknowledged ICE’s enforcement efforts, said Chicago police were not involved, and reminded residents to be aware of their rights.
On Sunday, federal law enforcement conducted multiple “immigration enforcement operations,” according to the City of Miami’s Homeland Security Investigations, announced on social media.
This included ICE’s Miami field office detaining illegal immigrants for various crimes.
An anonymous man told the BBC’s US news partner CBS News that ICE took his wife during a raid in Miami this weekend.
“What they’re doing now is despicable,” he told CBS. “I’m so embarrassed.”
He said his wife was in the process of obtaining citizenship when ICE arrived, and “they just came and kidnapped her.”
Last week, Newark Mayor Russ Barca said illegal aliens and citizens, including one veteran, were detained without warrants during ICE raids on local businesses.
“Newark cannot stand by while people are subjected to unlawful terror,” Baraka said.
Immigration advocates have warned that other people, including citizens, could be caught in the crossfire during ICE raids.
Meanwhile, Homan has reiterated that undocumented immigrants caught in raids on undocumented criminals will also be deported.
On Sunday, Homan said in an interview with ABC News that he expects the number of arrests and deportations to “steadily increase” and that the focus now is on “public safety threats, national security threats.” Ta.
The 956 arrests reported Sunday follow Saturday’s 286 arrests, Friday’s 593 arrests and Thursday’s 538 arrests.
According to statistics from the Migration Policy Institute, Joe Biden conducted 1.5 million deportations during his four years in office. These numbers reflect the number of deportations during President Trump’s first term.
