Major ICE Raids Didn’t Materialize Over The Weekend, Advocates Say

Immigrant rights advocates across the United States they saw few signs over the weekend of the ICE raids that Trump administration officials had warned would begin Sunday.

“It’s very quiet. Let’s hope it stays that way,” said Jose Mario Cabrera of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, speaking to CNN Sunday afternoon.

Jennaya Dunlap of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in Ontario, east of Los Angeles, also said she hadn’t seen signs of sweeps.

“The way we see it with all the rumors and hysteria, we’re telling the community that ICE is always conducting operations,” she said Sunday. “This is nothing new. It’s a daily reality for us.”

As of Sunday evening, there also weren’t any confirmed reports of migrants being apprehended in Baltimore, Chicago or New York, immigrant advocacy groups in those cities told CNN.

Most of the reports were about sightings of government vehicles, but advocates had confirmed they were not ICE.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New York said earlier on Twitter that it had received “some reports of ICE at subway stations, but none have been substantiated.”

A senior administration official said Sunday that the operation had begun. Its aim: detaining and deporting about 2,000 undocumented immigrants who’ve been ordered removed from the United States in immigration courts.

The raids are slated for Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco, a senior immigration official said. New Orleans is also on the list, but the city tweeted last week that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would suspend operations through the weekend in areas hit by Tropical Storm Barry, which weakened to a tropical depression Sunday.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, told CNN Monday that he didn’t know how many people had been arrested because the acting director of ICE hadn’t told him.

Asked why he didn’t have details, Cuccinelli said, “presumably because operational details are kept contained within the agency executing the operation, as they should be.”