Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly planning to start a mass roundup of undocumented immigrants in majors cities across the US this Sunday.
According to US senior government officials with knowledge of the plans have told the local media that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set to arrest up to 2,000 families in at least 10 US cities.
The US government is expected to arrest and deport families who have gone through their legal proceedings but has refrained from publicly providing the scope and timeframe of the operation, which officials say could lead to a situation where a family is separated and could cause a backlash against the department.
Official estimates put the number of Kenyans in the US at 130,000. The figure is, however, disputed, with some claiming there are at least 300,000 Kenyan immigrants in the country.
The operation, labelled “family Op” by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will start on Sunday and last several days, will target families that have deportation orders.
Among those to be targeted first are minors who came into the U.S. without their parents and have since turned 18; people who were ordered removed in absentia; and people who missed a court hearing and did not respond to letters mailed to their homes by the Department of Justice.
To avoid separating families, the ICE is reportedly planning to use hotel rooms as staging areas to detain parents and children it arrests until all family members are in custody.
President Doanld Trump on Monday night released a series of tweets in which he said ICE will conduct a major operation next week to remove millions of illegal immigrants from the United States.
A senior Trump administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told CNN that although the operation has been in the planning stage for a while, Trump’s tweets put it at the forefront. “Certainly, the President’s tweet helped prioritize things for people,” the official told CNN.