Mass Immigration Arrests Slated For Sunday Across SoCal

LOS ANGELES, CA — Three los Angeles civil rights groups sued the federal government Thursday to try to protect thousands of immigrant families and children targeted for Sunday's mass arrests by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

ICE is reportedly expected to arrest more than 2,000 immigrants in Los Angeles and elsewhere who have missed a court appearance or been ordered removed from the country, according to a report by the New York Times Thursday. The threat of mass deportations as Southern California's large immigrant population on edge. Given President Trump's oft-use tactic of making threats without follow-through in a bid to extract concessions, legislators and rights groups aren't sure how seriously to take the latest threat. Authorities hatched and scrapped similar plan last month.

ICE spokesman Matt Bourke would not confirm the pending raids or offer details, citing "law-enforcement sensitivities and the safety and security of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel."

Democrats denounced the threatened raids.

“This is not an effort to root out dangerous criminals,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times. “This is an act of brutish force designed to spread fear in the immigrant community .… ‘Make them afraid, and maybe they won’t come.’”

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and other groups filed suit Thursday in federal court in New York's Southern District on behalf of three Los Angeles-based non-profit service groups -- Central American Resource Center, Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Public Counsel -- as well as the New York's Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.

The lawsuit argues that constitutional due process requires the government to bring arrested families and children before an immigration judge so they can have a day in court before facing deportation.

ACLU said the suit aims to protect refugee families and children who fled widespread violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and other countries at the hands of their governments and murderous gangs. For many of these migrants, obtaining asylum in the U.S. "could be a matter of life and death," according to the ACLU.

Bourke said ICE "prioritizes the arrest and removal of unlawfully present aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security."

He added that 90% of those arrested by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division last year had either a criminal conviction, pending criminal charges or had illegally re-entered the country after previously being removed.

"However, all of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and -- if found removable by final order -- removal from the United States," he said.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.