The operation is expected to target hundreds of families in 10 cities that have recently been ordered deported by an immigration court but have not yet left the country.
Trump revealed the operation on Twitter last month and then postponed it. It is unusual for the government to announce deportation operations ahead of time.
"People are coming into this country illegally, we are taking them out legally," Trump told reporters on Friday, calling it a "major operation" that would mainly focus on removing criminals.
In a typical week, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests thousands of immigrants who are staying in the country illegally, according to government data. Most of those arrests are made without any advance publicity.
Immigrant advocates have said advance word of the weekend raids could help some of those targeted to evade arrest.
But the president, speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, said he was not concerned that the advance notice could help targeted immigrants evade arrest.
"If the word gets out, it gets out," he said.
Since Trump first spoke of the plan, a number of city mayors, nearly all Democrats, have repeated their long-standing policies of not cooperating with ICE officials on deportations and have advertised helplines people can call to understand their rights.
Democratic lawmakers, among others, have also sought to inform immigrants of their rights, telling them not to open their door for ICE unless agents present a court-issued warrant, and not to say or sign anything before speaking with a lawyer.
Deterring border crossings
Trump, a Republican who has made cracking down on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his administration, is trying to deal with a surge of mostly Central American families crossing the US-Mexico border. Many families are approaching border officials to seek asylum.
The latest planned arrests would follow widespread criticism of the crowded, unsanitary conditions in which immigrants are being detained along the southwestern border and concerns about children being separated from adults by border officials.
In a hearing on the subject on Friday at the US House of Representatives, some Democrats said they feared the forthcoming arrests could result in more immigrant children being separated from their families.
Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, asked a federal watchdog about its recently issued report saying detention conditions were below standards.
Jennifer Costello, the acting inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, told the congressional hearing that the government was falling short in terms of "crowding, the prolonged detention, some of the hygiene that the children are supposed to have."
Costello said it would be "impossible" to meet required standards under "the conditions that we saw there."
"It's shocking," she said.
Reporters taken inside
Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence to visit some of the criticized detention facilities in McAllen, Texas, on Friday along with journalists, who have generally been denied access to detained immigrants.
Reporters who joined the tour saw immigrants, including children, lying on mats on the floor covered with thin aluminum blankets. A few toys lay about, and some watched television.
The Trump administration has increased pressure on the governments of Mexico and several Central American countries to stem the flow of migrants reaching the US border.
Trump is to meet Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales at the White House on Monday for talks on immigration and security. Morales may sign an agreement with Trump declaring Guatemala a safe destination for asylum seekers, which could prevent many from applying in the United States, according to officials in both governments.
Alongside these international efforts, Trump has sought to deter border crossings with highly publicized crackdowns in the United States.
The operation that Trump said would start on Sunday is an example. ICE is expected to target families whose immigration cases were handled through an expedited court process that began in 2018.
The agency has notified about 2,000 of those people that they face deportation because they failed to appear in court, acting ICE Director Mark Morgan said last month.
Immigration rights activists have complained that in many cases immigrants, especially those involved in expedited hearings, do not receive proper notice of their court dates.
ICE has declined to discuss the weekend's operation, including whether those families are among those being targeted.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups sued this week to stop the arrests going ahead, asking a court to prevent the deportation of asylum-seeking families who missed their court dates until they at least get a hearing.
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Comments
Open borders is a Marxist position. In theory, the world was to bow to the socialist international world order and workers would be free to move from nation to nation. The reality was that socialist nations built walls, complete with machine guns and barbed wire to keep their people inside.
Open borders is meant to import a suffering underclass who are meant to vote left. This is why left leaning governments have embraced this insane vote losing pure communistic position. They are desperate to keep their voter base stacked with the oppressed.
Great civilizations built walls. Remember Horatius, Captain of the Gate: How can man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his father and the temple of his gods. Within those walls, the civilizations that thrived strived with all their power to protect their people and maintain freedom of the individual and protection of the esoteric, those heroes whose jobs it was to invent a new society from within.
The 'esoteric' are celebrated in the Old World, apart from U.S, where they are lumped in with the reviled 'elite'.
There's not much call for esotericism in NZ, squire.
Maybe, the value of talent is the one Randian principle to which I subscribe. It was, of course, promulgated by Lyndsay Perigo, NZ.