The move would
be among the first by Republican Trump, who returns to the White House on
Monday, to uphold a campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented
immigrants from the United States.
The remarks on
Friday by Trump's incoming "border czar" Tom Homan to Fox News came
in response to reports in the Wall Street Journal and other US outlets that
Trump's new administration planned to carry out an "immigration raid"
in Chicago beginning Tuesday.
"There's
going to be a big raid across the country. Chicago is just one of many
places," said Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) who oversaw a policy that separated migrant parents and
children at the border under the first Trump administration.
"On
Tuesday, ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We're going to take
the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens," he said in
the interview.
"What
we're telling ICE, you're going to enforce the immigration law without apology.
You're going to concentrate on the worst first, public safety threats first,
but no one is off the table. If they're in the country illegally, they got a
problem," Homan added.
The Wall Street
Journal reported that the "large-scale immigration raid" in Chicago
was expected to start on Tuesday, a day after Trump's inauguration, would
"last all week" and would involve 100 to 200 ICE officers, citing
four unnamed people familiar with the operation's planning.
Don Terry, a
Chicago police spokesman, told the New York Times that the department would not
"intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing
their duties."
But he said the
department "does not document immigration status" and "will not
share information with federal immigration authorities."
Midwestern
Chicago is one of several Democrat-led US cities that have declared themselves
"sanctuaries" for migrants -- meaning they will not be arrested
solely for not having legal immigrant status.
A Trump
representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.
AFP
0 comments:
Post a Comment