President Donald Trump asserted that the mass-deportation raids he forecast last week took place, despite few signs of removals being carried out at the scale he promised, Politico reports. “The ICE raids were very successful — people came into our country illegally, illegally,” Trump said. “Many, many were taken out on Sunday, you just didn’t know about it.” Trump said last week that the raids, which had already been delayed once amid internal resistance and word of their timing having leaked, would begin Sunday in nearly a dozen cities. Last month, he pledged that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials would begin work on deporting “millions of illegal aliens,” a lofty figure that Trump later revised down.
“We’re taking them out by the thousands,” he told reporters on Friday, pledging that the weekend’s operations would prioritize removing criminals. The plans sent waves of fear and paranoia through immigrant communities and prompted a hasty “Know Your Rights” campaign pushed by Democratic lawmakers. Despite reports of more routine, smaller removal operations over the weekend, according to multiple media reports and immigration advocacy groups, there was no sign of the wide-scale blitz Trump warned of. At the White House on Monday, however, Trump, fresh off an event with American manufacturers and a combative defense of a tirade of racist tweets about U.S. congresswomen, insisted that ICE officers had successfully carried out a slew of deportation orders. “I spoke to the head of ICE, I spoke to a couple of people,” he told reporters. “We had many people, it was a very successful day.” He began to explain why “you didn’t see a lot of it,” predicting that reporters would hear more about the operation later. “I’m not sure they should be telling you, but it was a lot.”