President Donald Trump said that his administration still plans to launch a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids starting in about a week, sometime after the July Fourth holiday.
Trump postponed the raids planned for 10 major cities last weekend, granting a two-week delay to see if an agreement on immigration reform could be reached with congressional Democrats and Republicans. Congress is now on recess through next week.
When asked during a press conference Saturday if he was still holding to the deadline, Trump responded, “Oh yeah.” Trump was in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit.
“Unless we do something pretty miraculous, but the Democrats it seems to me they want to have open borders,” the President said, adding, “We will be removing large numbers of people.”
He said that the raids would come “starting in a week after – sometime after July 4th,” later adding that “at the end of the second week we’ll be removing people, legally removing (them).”
On Thursday, the Democrat-led House passed a $4.6 billion emergency border funding bill that originated in the Senate and will go to the White House for the President’s signature. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed down from an effort to alter the legislation, saying instead that the House would “reluctantly” take up the Senate bill “to get resources to the children fastest.”
Trump praised the effort Saturday, saying, “We did get in a very bipartisan way, and I appreciate Speaker Pelosi because she really worked with us. It was humanitarian money.”
While he said it was “good” that the measure was approved, “we can have that number go way down if we stop people from coming up,” he added.
CNN’s Lauren Fox, Clare Foran, Manu Raju and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.