Trump Delays ICE Deportation Crackdown Hours After Supporting It

President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he was delaying plans to begin deporting thousands of undocumented immigrants by two weeks, hours after defending the idea.

Saturday afternoon the president tweeted, “At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!”

The raids, which were supposed to begin on Sunday, were targeted towards Central American families who had either been served a deportation order or who had skipped a court date. Trump announced the plan in a tweet last Monday that “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States.” His statement worried many Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials who feared that the president’s tweet would provide advanced warning to migrants and compromise the effectiveness of the raids.

The president’s plan resulted in a huge backlash from the Democrats, who attacked Trump for his willingness to split apart families. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took an active interest in the raids, making a personal phone call to the president on Friday in an attempt to convince him to halt the crackdown. On Saturday morning, the speaker stated that the plan was “heartless,” saying, “Families belong together. These families are hard-working members of our communities and our country. The President’s action makes no distinction between a status violation and committing a serious crime.”

On Saturday morning, Trump showed no signs that his support for the raids was ebbing, posting several tweets backing the idea.

Trump’s delay of the raids helped calm many ICE officials, who were worried about the possible consequences that could come from a raid targeting families. The biggest concern for many was that the presence of children would complicate the deportation of undocumented parents. One of the possible issues was that if migrant parents have a child when they are in the U.S. then their child will be a citizen and therefore cannot be deported with its parents, forcing the family to be separated. Another concern would be that parents would fight back against ICE to prevent being torn from their children, putting ICE officers in danger. It remains to be seen whether such a raid will occur if the president and the Democrats have not come to an agreement by Trump’s two-week deadline.