Donald Trump wants to go at full speed. While his inauguration will take place this Monday, January 20, we will have to wait less than a day for his anti-immigration policy to apply. The next day, the administration of the new Republican president should carry out mass arrests of undocumented migrants throughout the country, indicated on the American channel Fox NewsTom Homan, former director of the agency responsible for border control and immigration (ICE), and who will be in charge of borders in the Trump administration. “On Tuesday, ICE is going to come out and finally do its job. We’re going to allow them to arrest foreign criminals. What we’re saying to ICE is that you’re going to enforce immigration law without apologizing “, he warned. The scale of this operation, however, remains unclear, and no quantified objective has been provided.
The one that Donald Trump calls “border tsar” reacted to the revelations of the Wall Street Journalrevealing a few hours earlier that large-scale evictions were planned for next week in Chicago. While the article is based on the testimony of four people close to the case, this constitutes, for our colleagues, “the first step in the mass expulsion campaign promised by President-elect Donald Trump”. Nicknamed “Operation Safeguard”, the raid is expected to last until Monday January 27, according to the American daily’s sources. In Chicago alone, ICE plans to send between 100 and 200 agents to carry out this action.
The city of Chicago refuses to cooperate
The global metropolis in the heart of the Midwest was not chosen at random. Led by Democrats for almost a century, Chicago is one of the “sanctuary cities for migrants”, with New York and San Francisco, communities that refuse to turn over undocumented aliens detained by police to federal immigration authorities. And there is no reason for this to change with the former real estate tycoon coming to power.
In the New York Times, American daily located on the left, Don Terry, spokesperson for the Chicago police, reaffirmed that the department “would not intervene or interfere with other government agencies in the exercise of their functions”, while specifying that it “will not share information with federal immigration authorities.” Other officials in Massachusetts and Arizona also announced they would not cooperate with the administration.
With this new guarantor of American borders, “sanctuary cities” therefore find themselves in the eye of the storm. Last November, Tom Homan suggested increasing the number of federal immigration agents in these areas, adding that “if they don’t help us, then we will just double our spending in these cities.” The 60-year-old also did not hesitate to violently attack Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, saying that if the city was “in trouble”, it was because the “mayor sucked”. Tom Homan also threatened to throw in jail the mayor of Denver (Democrat), Mike Johnston, who strongly protested against Trump’s immigration plans.
“If they are in an irregular situation, they have a problem”
Furthermore, the cities of New York and Miami have also been cited as places of operations against undocumented migrants, according to statements to Reuters from a person close to the case. For his part, the New York Post confirms that a raid would be planned in New York. While the mayor, Eric Adams, belongs to the right wing of the Democrats, the objective for him was rather to find a compromise on this migration issue. After a meeting with Tom Homan last December, the New York city councilor declared that he intended to continue to “protect the rights of hard-working immigrants.” One way for him to sort things out: “We will not be a haven of peace for those who commit violent crimes.”
The American border official insisted that the administration would not hesitate to expel parents who are staying in the country undocumented, but who have children born in the United States. “You will focus first on the worst, on the threats to public security, but no one is excluded. If they are in an irregular situation, they have a problem,” he insisted. Asked by AFP, a representative of the new American head of state did not react to this information.
It remains to be seen how these operations will take place logistically, but also with what results. In 2019, Donald Trump launched a blitz aimed at targeting around 2,000 undocumented people in the United States as a show of force against immigration. Only 35 people were arrested during the operation.