Three people involved with the strategy told NBC News that federal law enforcement is focusing on three U.S. cities each week for mass immigration arrests, with Aurora, Colorado, to follow.
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies have concentrated their arrests thus far this week in Chicago, where they started an operation on Sunday, and New York City, where they started an operation on Tuesday. According to the sources, those operations would next move to Aurora, Colorado, for an operation that starts early Thursday morning.
During his presidential campaign, President Donald Trump made a point of claiming that Aurora, which is roughly 40 minutes outside of Denver, was infected by Venezuela. He made reference to accusations of criminal activity in Aurora by a Venezuelan gang. Trump’s comments was rebutted by city officials, and police director Todd Chamberlain told NBC News that Aurora is extremely safe.
ICE field offices nationwide have been instructed to step up their regular operations in order to pick up more migrants, according to sources familiar with plans to implement Trump’s pledge of mass deportation operations. According to them, certain federal law enforcement officers from other agencies might be involved in those operations.
In order to increase the number of arrests, agents from several federal agencies will also travel into three locations each week for larger operations. One source referred to this as an all-hands-on-deck strategy.
According to two people acquainted with an internal meeting, acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello instructed ICE field office executives on Sunday to boost daily arrests to a target of 1,200 to 1,500. One source stated that the figure represents a quota and that agents could face consequences if they fail to fulfill it, while another defined it as a target intended to serve as motivation. It was first reported by the Washington Post that ICE had been instructed to make a daily quota of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests of migrants.
Agents are reportedly making more “collateral arrests,” or arrests of migrants without criminal backgrounds, as a result of the mandate. Nearly half of the 1,200 people arrested on Sunday were not regarded as criminal offenses, a senior Trump administration official told NBC News.