Trump Tries to Take Credit for Delaying the ICE Raids He’d Planned Himself

The president tweeted that the raids are on hold for two weeks.

Jim Loscalzo/CNP/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would delay massive raids on undocumented immigrants that he had ordered on the eve of his reelection campaign kickoff earlier this week.

The president made his pronouncement via Twitter, saying that he had hit the pause button “at the request of Democrats.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had released a statement hours before Trump’s tweet asking for a stay.

On Monday night—one day before his first reelection rally in Orlando, Florida.—the president tweeted that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement would begin deporting “millions” of undocumented immigrants from the United States. The numbers didn’t quite scale as Trump suggested: Raids had been scheduled to remove 2,000 people who had received court-ordered removals in 10 cities on Sunday. The plans, however, had hung in limbo as acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary head Kevin McAleenan hesitated on the details, according to CNN.

Trump’s Twitter feed from earlier in the day showed no signs that his reversal was on the horizon. Just hours earlier, he appeared to affirm that the plan was still on:

He had also expounded on the plans to reporters earlier that day, noting that ICE was “a group of very, very good law enforcement people going by the law, going by the rules, going by our court system, and taking people out of our country who came into our country illegally.”

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