Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley is urging the Department of Homeland Security to halt its reported plan to conduct deportation raids on Central American families.

In a letter, the former Maryland governor called on DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to stop planned raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport newly arrived immigrants who entered the country illegally.

According to The Washington Post, ICE is planning to deport Central American immigrants who illegally entered the U.S. during a surge in border crossings in 2014. Advocates say many of the immigrants migrated to the U.S. in a desperate attempt to escape ongoing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. As a result, sending them home would put their lives in jeopardy.

The report states the raids would target hundreds of parents and children who were ordered to be deported by immigration judges.

"If these reports are true, they raise serious questions about due process for people seeking asylum, and these raids promise to needlessly rip apart more families and communities," O'Malley wrote in the letter, reports CBS News. "I am writing to respectfully request that D.H.S. reconsider this approach and instead look for ways to humanely treat people seeking refuge and to greatly improve the legal due process necessary for asylum."

According to O'Malley, deportations should only be conducted as a "last resort" when mechanisms for a "more rational, fair, and humane" handling of immigrants fail.

The former governor also cited his own past experience with helping immigrant refugees as an alternative to the raids.

"When, in 2014, tens of thousands of children made the journey to escape death gangs in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, we called on Marylanders to step up and help accommodate them," he said. "Maryland took action to safeguard more refugee kids on a per-capita basis than any other state in the nation. Thousands of families opened their homes as foster families. We recruited pro-bono legal help for case preparation. And we did all of this at minimal cost to the taxpayer."