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.
(NEW ORLEANS, La) — New Orleans city leaders were warned in a 2019 confidential physical security assessment that tourist-packed Bourbon Street was vulnerable to a vehicle-ramming attack because some of the existing blockade mechanisms were inoperable.
New Orleans first installed metal security barriers on Bourbon Street in 2017 following the 2016 truck terror attack on Bastille Day in Nice, France. That same year, a report prepared by the infrastructure consulting firm AECOM noted that Bourbon Street “is often densely packed with pedestrians,” presenting “a risk and target for terrorism.”
Two years later, a security assessment prepared for the French Quarter Management District by the security firm Interfor International faulted the bollards that had been installed.
“Some of the bollards were inoperable for a number of reasons,” Don Aviv, president of Interfor International, said. “Some were broken and some were kept down for ease of use.”
The existence of the 2019 assessment was first reported by The New York Times.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city had been in the process of renovating the malfunctioning bollards before hosting the Super Bowl in February.
“Bollards were not up because they are near completion, with the expectation of being completed by Super Bowl,” Cantrell said. “Because the City of New Orleans is hosting Super Bowl this year, it gave the City of New Orleans an opportunity to go further and deeper with infrastructure improvements.”
New Orleans police parked a cruiser to block Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve.
“We did indeed have a plan, but the terrorist defeated it,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
Video of the attack shows the suspect’s truck moving along Canal Street and making a right turn, moving around the police cruiser by driving onto the sidewalk. Aviv suggested it should not be so simple.
“For the type of environment the French Quarter is, there should be a systemic process to control traffic and to protect pedestrians,” Aviv said.
The French Quarter Management District told ABC News in a statement that it’s always focused on public safety.
“In 2019, the Board commissioned a study on Safety and Security in the French Quarter. This study was shared with our partners in the City of New Orleans, and its recommendations were made public,” the statement said. “The strength of our ongoing partnership with the City and NOPD allows open communications of resident and business concerns and the results of any studies or reports completed.”
ABC News’ Jared Kofsky contributed to this report.
(WEST PALM BEACH, FL) — A Florida man was arrested for allegedly making online threats to President Donald Trump, according to police.
Shannon Depararro Atkins, 46, was taken into custody on Friday following a traffic stop near his home in West Palm Beach, a short distance from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Atkins had allegedly posted “violent rhetoric” about Trump on his Facebook account, West Palm Beach Police Department Chief Tony Araujo said during a press conference on Saturday.
At least one of the posts, which Araujo showed reporters, consisted of a meme relating to the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024.
Police said Atkins admitted to writing the posts but said he had just been “joking.”
“Folks, this is not a joke. Nothing of that sort is a joke,” Araujo said.
Police said they became aware of the posts after another man, from Okeechobee, Florida, sent in a tip to the FBI.
Atkins was taken into custody without incident Friday night. He was found with cocaine on him, according to police.
It was not immediately clear if Atkins has retained an attorney. ABC News has reached out to him for comment.
Araujo said the U.S. Secret Service was notified of the arrest and is looking into it to determine if federal charges should be filed.
“In today’s climate, you really can’t say things like this,” Araujo said. “We have incident after incident, example after example, of when these threats become real, and we take these very seriously.”
(LOS ANGELES) — Fires are continuing to burn in Southern California, with further weather-related threats expected to increase as another Santa Ana wind event picks up this week.
While the end to the fire danger is not yet in sight, the hazards that will remain in its wake will be severe, especially due to the urban nature of many of the burn zones, experts told ABC News.
The fires burning in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties are occurring on the urban-wildland interface — areas where wildland landscapes meet with urban dwellings, Costas Synolakis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California who has studied how urban fires exacerbate post-fire related hazards, told ABC News. The further away from wildland, the less chance of ignition, which is why heavy winds were able to spark house-to-house spread quickly.
But these wildfires are so severe that they have penetrated into more urban areas, Scott Stephens, professor of fire science at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News.
The fires will have unprecedented environmental impacts, Synolakis said.
Landslides will be of great concern once the fires subside
Once the fires are out, landslides from burn scars will be a big concern when rain returns to Southern California and could be an issue for years to come. Post-fire debris flows are particularly hazardous because they can occur with little warning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Post-wildfire landslides can exert great loads on objects in their paths, strip vegetation, block drainage ways, damage structures and endanger human life, according to the USGS. Additionally, wildfires could destabilize pre-existing, deep-seated landslides over long periods. Flows generated over longer periods could be accompanied by root decay and loss of soil strength, according to the USGS.
Landslides already historically occur in California. But conditions are currently extreme enough to warrant concern for increased threat, Edith de Guzman, a water equity and adaptation policy cooperative extension specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told ABC News
The wildfires are incinerating the shrub cover, so when a rain event does occur, the precipitation hits a ground surface that could be bare minerals and unable to soak it up, Stephens said.
“You’re going to get flows of soil, rock and debris,” Stephens said.
In Los Angeles, debris basins designed to catch some of the materials sliding down the mountain to lessen the threat of landslide hazards have been built in Mount Wilson and near Eaton Canyon.
The landslide danger will be especially dangerous in the Pacific Palisades, the neighborhood nestled in the lower hills of the Santa Monica mountain range on the Westside of Los Angeles that was decimated by the Palisades fire, because there is no debris basin there, Synolakis said.
“Palisades is going to be an area that people need to be on the watchout for landslides because the valley walls are steep,” Synolakis said.
The houses that did survive the wildfire in the Palisades could also be in great danger of a severe rainstorm undercutting the foundation, Synolakis added.
Homes near creeks and steep hills could also contribute a lot of debris to landslides, Stephens said.
An average of 25 to 50 people are killed by landslides each year in the U.S., according to the USGS.
Long-term pollution could impact the region, experts say
An even bigger concern than potential landslides is the environmental impact of the fires, Synolakis said. In the near future, these burned-out communities will be filled with cleanup crews dressed in hazmat suits, Hugh Safford, a research fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, told ABC News.
Since the fires are burning down manmade structures, the materials used to construct homes and cars are depositing toxins into the air and ground as they combust, the experts said.
“This is going into the local creek systems and in the local soils,” Safford said, adding that many of the homes built before the 1980s likely are filled with asbestos.
Debris from the scorched homes near Malibu’s Big Rock will end up in the ocean as well — by wind and sea — due to the proximity to the coastline, Synolakis said.
In Altadena, homes that were destroyed near the San Gabriel Valley Groundwater Basin could contribute pollutants to the water system, De Guzman said.
Researchers are already monitoring soil to see what kinds of heavy metals and other toxins have seeped in during the combustion process. It won’t be long before the toxins end up in the ocean through the watershed, Synolakis said.
The environmental impact of a series of wildfires this big is yet to be seen, Synolakis said. And the cleanup process will be long and arduous, Safford said.
Fire danger expected to persist
On Monday afternoon, winds will begin to pick up in the mountains and higher elevations gusting 20 to 30 mph, locally 50 mph.
There is very little rain relief for the fires in sight for the Los Angeles area in the near future, forecasts show.
While there is a 20% chance for a sprinkle on Saturday, that precipitation is expected to occur closer to San Diego.
Dry conditions are expected in the long term as well. Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that La Nina conditions are expected to persist through April 2025, with Southern Californian expected to be very close to drier than normal.
