House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday urged illegal immigrants to refuse to open the door to ICE officers, saying they have rights and must exercise them to thwart the administration’s planned deportation sweep.

“An ICE deportation warrant is not the same as a search warrant,” Mrs. Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.

She said the illegal immigrants, who have arrived in the last year as part of the border surge, deserve the chance to stay and work in the U.S., and she urged President Trump to cancel the planned sweeps, which will target some 2,000 illegal immigrants who arrived as families, were ordered deported, and are defying those judges’ orders.

Democrats and immigrant-rights activists are moving to thwart the planned operation, first reported by The New York Times.

They have shared legal guidance online — and Mrs. Pelosi broached the matter at her press conference — informing illegal immigrants that they have the right to refuse to open the door to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer bearing an administrative arrest warrant.

Administrative warrants are not the same as a judicial criminal warrant, and lawyers say migrants have the right to refuse entry to a home if ICE only has an administrative warrant.

“These families are hard-working members of our country and our community,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer predicted Mr. Trump will have to cancel the planned deportations once pictures of illegal immigrant children being arrested go viral.

“I warn President Trump, the pictures of these raids aren’t going to be pretty,” the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor. “You’re going to have to back off from this cruel policy because the American people are a lot better than you.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign team fired back, accusing Democrats of “sabotaging” the deportations and saying they were embracing an “open-borders” policy.

“If people who ignore court orders & stay in the U.S. illegally are not deported, we do not have rule of law,” the Trump campaign war room said on Twitter. “Democrats have become the party that puts illegal immigrants first!”

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.