President Trump confirmed that deportation sweeps will begin Sunday in about 10 major U.S. cities, saying it’s impossible to keep such a “major operation” secret from the public.

“There’s nothing to be secret about,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “The word gets out because hundreds of people know about the major operation. It starts on Sunday, and they’re going to take people out, and they’re going to bring them back to their countries, or they’re going to take criminals out, and put them in prison.”

The sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been delayed, and some Democrats in Congress are urging illegal immigrants and city officials not to cooperate with law enforcement.

The president criticized mayors of sanctuary cities, singling out New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as “probably the worst mayor in the country.”

“He doesn’t work very hard — nobody knows what the hell he does,” Mr. Trump said.

The president said while Mr. de Blasio “probably doesn’t want” the sweep, many other mayors do.

“We’re focused on criminals as much as we can,” the president said. “We’ve been taking them out by the thousands, specifically gang members from MS-13 and other gangs. We are really specifically looking for bad players. But we’re also looking for people that came into our country, not through a process, that just walked over the line [border]. They came in illegally. They have to go out. We have millions of people standing on the line waiting to become citizens of this country. It’s not fair that somebody walks across the line.”

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