Post-inauguration ICE raids starting as soon as Tuesday: Sources
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(WASHINGTON) — As part of President-elect Donald Trump’s strategy to secure the border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will carry out post-inauguration raids as early as Tuesday, sources briefed on the plans told ABC News.
ICE will likely start in Chicago and could move on to other big cities, according to sources, who noted the plans could change.
Trump called the raids a “big priority” when asked by ABC News’ Rachel Scott whether his administration could carry out post-inauguration raids as early as Tuesday. He declined to discuss timing but vowed it “will happen.”
“It’s a priority that we get the criminals out of our country,” he said. “And it is for everybody else — it’s one of the reasons I won the election by such a big margin. And it is a priority.”
ICE has been ramping up its operations in anticipation of Trump’s plan to carry out deportations, and the agency put out a request for ICE agents to volunteer to help with at least some of the operations, according to a source.
The plans were first reported by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Agencies that fall under the Department of Homeland Security umbrella, such as Enforcement and Removal Operations, which handles deportations, and Homeland Security Investigations, have been put on “alert” by the incoming administration, officials with knowledge of the plan told ABC News.
Although field teams have not been given specific details about what next week will hold, federal agents assigned to the region were asked to prepare cases and operations that were “ready to go,” the officials said.
Tom Homan, the incoming border czar, has previewed these operations in past comments, especially targeting Chicago.
In December, Homan visited the city and promised enforcement operations would begin there.
“All that starts Jan. 21, and we’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois,” Homan said during the visit.
Homan has promised to go after violent offenders in the United States.
The main gate at the prison in Guantanamo at the US Guantanamo Naval Base on October 16, 2018, in Guantanamo Base, Cuba. (Photo by SYLVIE LANTEAUME/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — When Jose, a Venezuelan migrant who was seeking asylum in the United States, was awoken by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official at 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 8, he sensed he was being sent to Guantanamo Bay, home of the notorious U.S. prison camp that administration officials said would house the most violent “worst of the worst” migrants apprehended on American soil.
“When we got on the [military] plane, they put restraints on our hands, feet, and waist,” said Jose, who requested that his last name not be used out of fear of retribution. “They searched us and then sat us in a chair, tying us to it and binding our feet together. We hoped it wouldn’t be Guantanamo but in the end, that’s where we ended up.”
Jose is one of the more than 170 migrants who spent two weeks at the naval base before being sent to Venezuela. He told ABC News that while he had a suspicion he was being sent to Guantanamo, he claims U.S. officials never told him and the other migrants where they were being sent.
“Our minds were racing, thinking we were kidnapped, wondering who would get us out of there,” said Jose. “Because no one tells you anything.”
Jose told ABC News that he had traveled to Mexico’s northern border to wait for an asylum appointment that he requested through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app, prior to it being shut down by the Trump administration. After three weeks of waiting and “no food or a place to stay,” he decided to surrender to authorities at the U.S. southern border. He was detained at a detention center until he was transferred to Guantanamo.
ABC News spoke with Jose and another Guantanamo detainee, Jhoan Bastidas Paz, in Spanish, and reviewed court testimonies from three other detainees about their experience on the naval base before they were released. They allege U.S. officials transferred them to Guantanamo despite their having no criminal records, and several claim they were denied phone calls with their attorneys and relatives despite repeated demands.
“From the moment we were there, we tried to kick the doors, we went on countless strikes,” Jose said. “We clogged the toilets and protested, we covered the cameras because the confinement is unbearable.”
Jose told ABC News the room in which he was placed had “cobwebs and a disgusting smell.” He said that he spent 10 days without a mattress.
“They give you food … but it’s like they don’t give you any, [it’s] very little food,” Jose said. “There came a point where I would lick the plate. The food had no salt, but I would still eat it as if it were very tasty, because I was hungry.”
Jose said he and the other detainees were only allowed outside twice in two weeks and were denied phone calls with their relatives and families.
“There are four cages outside,” Jose said. “That’s the yard. You leave one room to go into another cell.”
Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Bastidas Paz had surrendered to authorities after crossing the U.S. southern border from Mexico in 2023. He was charged with “improper entry” to which he pleaded guilty, and was in a detention center in El Paso, Texas, until he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
Both Jose and Bastidas Paz told ABC News they are not members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, despite the U.S. government saying they are.
“We’re not from Tren de Aragua or anything, we’re not criminals, we’re immigrants,” Bastidas Paz said. He said that officials never told him he was being sent to Guantanamo and then to Venezuela.
“I don’t think it’s fair that they’re taking us there, like that, with lies, because practically we’re being taken there, kidnapped, without telling us anything, and when we realize it, they leave us there, and I don’t think it’s fair,” Bastidas Paz said.
Bastidas Paz told ABC News that he went on a hunger strike with other detainees while they demanded information from officials. He also claims he was only allowed to shower three times during the time he was in Guantanamo.
“We are immigrants and we haven’t committed any crime to be taken to that very ugly prison,” Bastidas Paz said.
Jose said he has not been able to sleep since he arrived in Venezuela.
“I haven’t slept at all because of the fear that I might fall asleep and … I’d wake up back there,” he told ABC News. “That’s the terror I feel.”
(WASHINGTON) — A group of nonprofits suing the Trump administration over its 90-day foreign aid freeze is accusing government officials of “accelerating their terminations of contracts and suspensions of grants of USAID and State Department partners,” according to court documents filed Wednesday.
The aid groups, who filed their suit Tuesday, said many of them “received new purported termination notices, including yesterday and this morning” and suggested that government officials “may be doing so specifically in response to this lawsuit.”
The groups asked a federal judge to either issue a temporary restraining order to prevent further terminations, or schedule an emergency hearing on Wednesday to address the matter.
Defendants in the suit include President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Acting USAID Administrator Peter Marocco, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, the State Department, USAID, and OMB.
The plaintiffs claim that Trump’s aid freeze amounts to an “unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power that has created chaos” around the globe, according to the suit.
The lawsuit alleges that the foreign aid freeze is unlawful, exceeds Trump’s authority as president, and is causing havoc.
“One cannot overstate the impact of that unlawful course of conduct: on businesses large and small forced to shut down their programs and let employees go; on hungry children across the globe who will go without; on populations around the world facing deadly disease; and on our constitutional order,” the lawsuit says.
(NEW YORK) — Steve Bannon wants more aggressive lawyers to represent him when he stands trial on charges he defrauded donors to an online campaign to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, he argued in a court hearing Wednesday.
“I’ve been smeared by a political prosecution, persecution, for years and going to trial I need people who are more aggressive and will use every tool in the toolbox to fight this,” Bannon said.
Bannon, who was a White House strategist during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, pleaded not guilty in 2022 to charges he defrauded donors to the “We Build the Wall” online fundraising effort.
Prosecutors saw Bannon’s request on Wednesday as a gambit to delay trial.
“If there’s going to be request for delay because of the new attorneys coming in then we would oppose their entry,” prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson said.
Judge April Newbauer did not immediately relieve Bannon’s previous attorneys, but agreed to delay the trial by one week — to March 4 — to give Bannon’s new attorney, Arthur Aidala, time to get up to speed.
“This does not seem to upset anyone’s apple cart,” Newbauer said. “It does give new counsel a bit more time to prepare.”
Aidala pledged to be ready for trial by the date set.
“We will roll up our sleeves and get it done,” Aidala said.
The trial is expected to last about three weeks.
Bannon is accused of defrauding New York-based donors to the online fundraising campaign to build a wall along the U.S. southern border.
Bannon was initially charged with federal crimes, but received a pardon at the end of Trump’s first term.
