California Braces For Mass ICE Raid Sunday

LOS ANGELES, CA — President Trump on Friday confirmed reports of a nationwide immigration raid targeting large cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco on Sunday.

It’s the second time over the last month that the President threatened mass deportations, setting off widespread panic in immigration communities as well as a series of lawsuits by civil rights and immigration advocates. The first raid was called off, prompting uncertainty about how seriously to take the president’s latest plans.

“Nothing to be secret about,” Trump told reporters at the White House Friday. “It starts on Sunday, and 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.”

ICE is reportedly expected to arrest more than 2,000 immigrants who have missed a court appearance or been ordered removed from the country, according to a report by the New York Times Thursday. Statistically, that is a tiny fraction of the nation's undocumented immigrants, but the threatened raid, once again, sent fear through immigrant communities. And that may just be the point: to rile up Trump’s base while terrorizing immigrants, said Roberto Suro, a public policy professor at USC.

“It’s purely psychological,” Suro told the Los Angeles Times. “This is yet one more example of how the Trump administration is trying to use fear as an instrument of immigration control. It generates a lot of fear and anxiety but not a lot of control. This has nothing to do with actual enforcement.”

The president’s decision to publicize the raids ahead of time is unusual, but there is a reason for it, Thomas Kilbride, a retired Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent and ICE policy adviser, told Fox News.

“It’s unprecedented. But there is a political purpose behind it,” Kilbride said.

The move is designed to pressure Democrats to negotiate with the president on changes to asylum laws, he said.

It is getting a reaction. Democrats denounced the threatened raids. Civil rights groups filed a flurry of lawsuits this week aimed at protecting the due process rights of immigrants, and government officials and nonprofits from San Francisco to San Diego are mobilizing resources for immigrant communities.

"In light of recent reports about possible ICE actions of the next two weeks the Mayor’s Office is making a concerted effort to distribute our Know Your Resources guides,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s Office said in a release directing residents to a website educating them about their rights when dealing with ICE. “These guides outline what to do in preparation for possible action, outline important city resources and policies, and also have a Know Your Rights Card at the bottom that can be given to an ICE agent in the case of action. This info can also be found at the Mayor’s website: www.jessearreguin.com/know-your-resources.”

Three Los Angeles civil rights groups sued the federal government Thursday to try to protect thousands of immigrant families and children targeted for Sunday's mass arrests by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

ICE spokesman Matt Bourke would not confirm the pending raids or offer details, citing "law-enforcement sensitivities and the safety and security of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel."

“This is not an effort to root out dangerous criminals,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times. “This is an act of brutish force designed to spread fear in the immigrant community .… ‘Make them afraid, and maybe they won’t come.’”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis held a news conference Friday morning to spread word of the possible raids. She said immigrants have the right to refuse to open the door if ICE agents show up at their homes.

"If they don't have a warrant with your name on it, you don't have to answer," she said.

Solis issued a statement saying the county "will do everything in its power to ensure that no child regardless of citizenship status will be left alone or abandoned."

"Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect," she said. "Forcibly separating children from their parents is traumatizing and inhumane. Children and their families enduring this type of trauma suffer from lifelong emotional wounds. To rip a child from the warm and loving embrace of their family is an unspeakable crime against humanity. The United States has been and will always be a nation of immigrants. I call on all Americans to reject the politics of division, hate, and fear."

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore have both insisted that city officers will not assist ICE agents in raids. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he was strongly opposed to the raids.

"The presence of undocumented residents in our communities calls for compassion, not threats of deportation and family separation," Villanueva said. "As your Los Angeles County sheriff, I stand for everyone's public safety and understand a basic principle of law enforcement, which is that we cannot ensure public safety if residents are afraid to contact law enforcement to report a crime."

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and other groups filed suit Thursday in federal court in New York's Southern District on behalf of three Los Angeles-based non-profit service groups -- Central American Resource Center, Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Public Counsel -- as well as the New York's Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.

The lawsuit argues that constitutional due process requires the government to bring arrested families and children before an immigration judge so they can have a day in court before facing deportation.

ACLU said the suit aims to protect refugee families and children who fled widespread violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and other countries at the hands of their governments and murderous gangs. For many of these migrants, obtaining asylum in the U.S. "could be a matter of life and death," according to the ACLU.

Bourke said ICE "prioritizes the arrest and removal of unlawfully present aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security."

He added that 90% of those arrested by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division last year had either a criminal conviction, pending criminal charges or had illegally re-entered the country after previously being removed.

"However, all of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and -- if found removable by final order -- removal from the United States," he said.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.