US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are planning to launch sweeping deportation raids this weekend as the Trump administration expands its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the New York Times reported Thursday.
A senior administration immigration officials says that ICE has about one million names on a list of targets in the raids, which have been postponed for two weeks, partly due to resistance from inside ICE, according to the Time report.
The report says the move planned for Sunday will initially target some 2,000 members of undocumented migrant families in at least 10 cities.
ICE has already obtained removal orders from courts, allowing them to move quickly to expel the migrants, some of whom may have been in the United States for over a decade, building lives for their families.
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Wednesday that ICE has court-issued removal orders for around one million people, but acknowledged that it has nowhere near the manpower and facilities capacity to pursue that many.
"They are absolutely going to happen," Cuccinelli said of the raids, speaking to reporters at the White House.
"There are approximately a million people in this country with removal orders. Of course that isn't what ICE will go after in this. But that's the pool of people who have been all the way through the due process chain."
In a tweet, he added, "Border numbers are down in June but we are still in the middle of a major humanitarian crisis. Congress can fix this if they pass common sense asylum reforms that the Trump administration has been asking for."
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