President-elect Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the incoming administration is reconsidering whether to launch immigration raids in Chicago this week after preliminary details leaked out in news reports, the Washington Post reports.
Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the new administration “hasn’t made a decision yet.”
“We’re looking at this leak and will make a decision based on this leak,” Homan said. “It’s unfortunate because anyone leaking law enforcement operations puts officers at greater risk.”
ICE has been planning a large operation in the Chicago area that would start after Inauguration Day and would bring in additional officers to ramp up arrests.
Homan said he did not know why Chicago “became a focus of attention” and said the incoming administration’s enforcement goals are much broader than one city.
“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” he said. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines. Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.”
“This is nationwide thing,” he added. “We’re not sweeping neighborhoods. We have a targeted enforcement plan.”
Homan and other Trump aides say they want immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to once more fear arrest and choose to leave the country on their own, or “self-deport.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote that Homan said at a holiday party last month in Chicago that the administration would start raids “right here” and threatened to prosecute Mayor Brandon Johnson for harboring undocumented immigrants if he got in the way.
News of the coming raids leaked after the Chicago City Council decisively rejected an effort to allow city police to cooperate with immigration enforcement. “We intend to stand by and protect Chicago’s immigrant communities against threats from ICE,” Johnson said.