Trump border czar defends school, church raids as agencies target Chicago

Border czar defends church and school raids in crackdown on illegal immigration, as Trump ramps up deportations.

Donald Trump's border czar on Sunday (January 26, 2025) defended raiding churches and schools as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration, while six federal agencies launched a sweep aimed at "potentially dangerous criminal aliens" in Chicago.

Mr. Trump began his second term on last Monday with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling U.S. immigration.

His administration quickly moved to ramp up deportations, including by relaxing rules governing enforcement actions at "sensitive" locations such as schools, churches and workplaces.

Asked about the rule change, Tom Homan, who was tapped to oversee Mr. Trump's hard-line immigration agenda, said on Sunday it sends a clear message.

"There's consequences of entering the country illegally. If we don't show there's consequences, you're never going to fix the border problem," Mr. Homan, who is also the former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told ABC News's "This Week" program.

But Mr. Trump has been unhappy with the number of arrests so far and has directed federal immigration officials to meet higher detention quotas, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

It said he was ordering ICE to raise the arrest numbers from a few hundred a day to at least 1,200 to 1,500, citing people with knowledge of internal briefings.