Nancy Pelosi implored Trump in phone call to halt ICE raids on immigrant families
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pleaded with President Donald Trump in a phone call Friday to call off raids Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on immigrant families, according to media reports.
Trump and Pelosi spoke for about 12 minutes in the early evening, a source told CNN. White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere confirmed that the two talked on the phone. Trump told Pelosi he would consider her request, a source told The Associated Press.
Trump announced Saturday afternoon in a tweet that at “the request of Democrats” he would hold off the raids for two weeks. He characterized the delay as an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to forge an agreement on immigration.
Pelosi responded that Trump’s delay was “welcome,” and that “time was needed for immigration reform.”
Earlier in the day, before Trump announced the delay, Pelosi had call the planned action “heartless” and “brutal.”
“These families are hard-working members of our communities and our country,” she said in a statement. “The president’s action makes no distinction between [an immigrant] status violation and committing a serious crime.”
The raids had been planned to begin before dawn Sunday. ICE would have targeted some 2,000 families who received deportation orders in Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, among other cities, sources told The Washington Post.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
