Just hours after claiming to have gifted Democrats with a temporary halt to nationwide ICE raids, President Trump appeared to issue a second taunt on Twitter Sunday. “I want to give the Democrats every last chance to quickly negotiate simple changes to Asylum and Loopholes,” Trump wrote, following Saturday’s dramatic reversal of planned raids throughout immigrant communities in 10 major cities.
“This will fix the Southern Border, together with the help that Mexico is now giving us. Probably won’t happen, but worth a try,” he continued. “Two weeks and big Deportation begins!”
Trump had previously taken the extraordinary step of announcing ICE raids in the first place—something that caught the organization itself off-guard—and confronting Democrat and humanitarian outrage with, what else, more tweets. “The people that Ice will apprehend have already been ordered to be deported,” Trump opined early Saturday. “They broke the law by coming into the country, & now by staying.” Mere hours later, however, Trump claimed to have delayed the raids until the 4th of July weekend, citing Democratic intervention.
Per The New York Times, house speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with Trump by phone on Friday night in an effort to cancel the raids, subsequently calling them “heartless” in a Saturday statement. Following Trump’s apparent concession, Pelosi tweeted “Mr. President, delay is welcome. Time is needed for comprehensive immigration reform. Families belong together.”
The planned raids would have targeted some 2,000 families across Miami, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago and other major cities—again raising the spectre of children being separated from their undocumented parents. The resulting outrage from Democrats and immigration activists also threatened the passage of a $4.5 billion humanitarian aid bill, which the Trump administration claims is needed to handle a surge in migrants at the border.
It is otherwise unclear what specific concessions Trump is seeking beyond his usual gripes against asylum-seeking migrants. Also uncertain is whether ICE raids would indeed commence over a 4th of July holiday weekend, given Trump’s continual attention to bad optics.