US immigration authorities will carry out mass arrests of undocumented immigrants across the country on Tuesday, a top border official in the incoming administration of Donald Trump has said.

The move would be among the first by Republican Trump, who returns to the White House on Monday, to uphold a campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States.

The remarks on Friday by Trump's incoming "border czar" Tom Homan to Fox News came in response to reports in the Wall Street Journal and other US outlets that Trump's new administration planned to carry out an "immigration raid" in Chicago beginning Tuesday.

"There's going to be a big raid across the country. Chicago is just one of many places," said Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who oversaw a policy that separated migrant parents and children at the border under the first Trump administration.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the "large-scale immigration raid" in Chicago was expected to start on Tuesday, a day after Trump's inauguration, would "last all week" and would involve 100 to 200 ICE officers,.

Don Terry, a Chicago police spokesman, told the New York Times that the department would not "intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing their duties."