The Justice Department announced Sunday it had begun a multiagency immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, as the Trump administration sought to show it is quickly fulfilling a campaign promise to ramp up arrests and deportations.
Officials said a host of law enforcement agencies would conduct such operations in the coming days. The Justice Department announced that its acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, had traveled to Chicago to oversee the effort to address what he called a “national emergency.”
The Trump administration has enlisted various law enforcement agencies within the Justice Department — the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals — to assist operations in Chicago and elsewhere.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement on Sunday night that it had made 956 arrests on Sunday, though it was unclear how many of them were in Chicago. Local officials in Chicago said they had not been involved in the operations. In some neighborhoods, residents said people were concerned, but also confused about how the reported immigration operations were going to play out.
Mr. Bove said in a written statement that he had watched agents from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security deploy in lock step “to address a national emergency arising from four years of failed immigration policy.” The Justice Department, he added, was working to “secure the border, stop this invasion and make America safe again.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that federal agencies have started “enhanced targeted operations” in Chicago “to enforce U.S. immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities.”
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