Cruelty Is the Point: Communities Fight Back as Threat of ICE Raids Terrorize Immigrant Families

This weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched a handful of raids across the country as part of President Trump's push to detain and deport thousands of undocumented migrants in 10 major cities. Agents in Chicago reportedly arrested a mother and her children only to quickly release them. Arrests were also attempted in New York City, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Harlem, where immigrants reportedly refused to open their doors to ICE agents because they did not have warrants. Authorities say more raids are planned this week, prompting fear but also generating mass protests on the ground. We speak with Elora Mukherjee, a professor of law and director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She has spent the past 12 years representing immigrant children and adults along the U.S.-Mexico border. "The raids will leave children without their parents. The raids will leave children without their caregivers," Mukherjee says. "The raids will leave U.S. citizen children without anyone in America to care for them. It is a heartbreaking situation."