Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan said large-scale raids as part of President-elect Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration are set to begin as soon as Tuesday.

In an interview with Fox News on Friday night, Homan did not offer further details, but he did confirm that Chicago will be one of the cities targeted.

“On Tuesday, ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE,” he said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Homan, a former acting head of ICE, added that immigration agents will focus on the “worst first, public safety threats first, but no one is off the table. If they’re in the country illegally, they got a problem.”

The anticipated raids in Chicago were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. It comes after Homan visited the city in December and threatened to prosecute the city’s mayor if he refused to cooperate.

On Saturday, Homan told The Washington Post that the incoming administration was reconsidering launching raids in Chicago because details had leaked in the media, but had yet to make a final decision.

Chicago is one of the hundreds of sanctuary cities and counties in the U.S., which typically prohibit local resources from supporting federal immigration enforcement.

The prospect of raids in Chicago echoes Homan’s past remarks that he will not allow sanctuary jurisdictions to hinder the incoming administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

On Saturday, Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, said the news that immigration raids could start in Chicago on Tuesday “wasn’t a surprise,” but that “hearing confirmation made it more real, more concrete.”

She said the city is prepared. In addition to community agencies holding “know your rights” events all over, she said Chicago leaders have met with city departments and sister agencies, such as the police and public school district, to detail existing city policies.

An estimated 11 million immigrants live in the U.S. without legal status.

Both Homan and Trump have vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But the plan is expected to face legal and logistical hurdles, including where to house millions of people once they are detained.

In Chicago, community organizers and elected officials scramble to encourage residents to not panic

On the city’s Southwest Side, Any Huamani, a community organizer with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, was fielding requests for Know Your Rights Trainings and leading a rapid response team via private group chat. Team members are ready to be dispatched in case ICE agents arrive in her community.

“Obviously each scenario is different,” Huamani said. “If they’re there to detain someone, rapid response teams respond in a different way. We have to yell out ‘These are your rights. You know, who can we call? Give us a phone number.’ And we’re also trying to record … ICE agents, if there’s an ICE truck or if it’s an unrecognizable truck.”

Meanwhile, 20 requests for trainings had come in.

The biggest fear among immigrants who don’t have a legal status in the U.S., Huamani said, is leaving their children behind.

During Trump’s first administration, his “zero tolerance” policy separated more than 5,000 children from parents who crossed the border, without systems to track and reunite families. Some also fear being detained or held in cities or states unfamiliar to them. Huamani has been advising people at risk of being detained by ICE to memorize at least three phone numbers so that they can be located if taken into ICE custody.

Organizers are worried that ICE agents could target the city’s Southwest Side and execute workplace raids in nearby suburbs, where there are also large concentrations of immigrants without legal status.

Garien Gatewood, Chicago’s deputy mayor of community safety, said the police department has been working under a welcoming city ordinance for 40 years, which stipulates that immigration enforcement is up to the federal government.

Chicago’s police department does not document immigration status, nor share information with federal immigration authorities, said spokesman Don Terry in a statement. But he added that police “will not intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing their duties.”

“From the top down, everybody at CPD understands the roles that they play,” he said. “This is not the first time that they’ve had interactions with federal agents acting about immigration status.”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office did not provide a response to news that immigration raids were going to start in Chicago next week. The office provided a transcript of the governor’s statement at a Dec. 11 press conference where he said he “believes it is his obligation to protect” immigrants without legal status who have not committed violent crimes.

WBEZ has more on how Chicago is preparing for the incoming Trump administration.

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

President-elect Donald Trump said he would “most likely” extend the deadline for ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to divest the video app which faces a nationwide ban that is set to come into effect on Sunday.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump said he was considering issuing a 90-day extension to the deadline. His comments come one day after TikTok warned that its 170mn users would face an imminent blackout after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the divest-or-ban law that Congress passed last year to address China-related national security concerns.

“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation . . . If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday.”

On Friday, Trump said he had spoken to President Xi Jinping and discussed TikTok with the Chinese leader. Chinese state media said the two leaders had spoken but did not specify if TikTok was part of the conversation.

The Biden administration on Friday said it would leave decisions about enforcement of the law, which comes into effect at midnight on Saturday eastern time, to the incoming Trump administration.

That means the companies that provide the video platform — including Apple, Google and Oracle — have to decide whether to risk violating the law between the midnight deadline and Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Apple and Oracle declined to comment, while Google did not immediately respond.

TikTok said statements from the Biden administration “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans”.

It also warned that the video app would “go dark” on January 19 unless the Biden administration “immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement”.

In an overwhelming bipartisan vote last March, Congress passed a law that required ByteDance to divest TikTok to avoid a nationwide ban on the app.

Lawmakers and US security officials believe that Chinese ownership of the app poses a national security risk because it could be used for espionage and disinformation by the Chinese Communist party. TikTok has denied that the Chinese government has any influence over the app.

In his first term, Trump issued an executive order to block TikTok from operating in the US, but it was stymied by the courts at the last minute. In early 2024, he came out in opposition to the congressional divest-or-ban measure on the grounds that it would help Facebook, which banned him from its social media platform for two years.

Trump has appointed several China hawks who oppose Chinese ownership of TikTok to his administration, including Mike Waltz, a former green beret and Florida congressman, who will serve as national security adviser.

Earlier this week, Waltz said the incoming administration would put “measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark”, saying the legislation allowed for an extension as long as a “viable deal” was on the table.

Following the TikTok statement on Friday, Rush Doshi, a former senior Biden administration China official, wrote on X that the company only had itself to blame.

“TikTok had 268 days to sell itself so it wasn’t operated by China. That would have solved everything. But they didn’t even try. China wouldn’t let them,” Doshi said.

“Now, with time short, they want Biden to ignore a bipartisan law SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) upheld 9-0. If they shut down, it’s on them.”

Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy and Michael Acton