United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 15th of January 2026, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported holding around 73,000 people in custody. That was the highest figure since the agency was founded in 2003. ICE is a federal law enforcement agency inside the Department of Homeland Security, and it enforces more than 400 federal statutes. Yet by early 2026 its name had become shorthand for some of the sharpest arguments in American public life. Its personnel are known informally in Spanish as "la migra", a label it inherited from the agency that came before it. How did an organization assembled in a single government reorganization grow to this size? What do its officers and agents actually do, and why do they sometimes work at cross purposes? And why do supporters and critics describe the same institution in such different terms?

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• 2. Roots of an Agency

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  In 1876, the Supreme Court decided Chy Lung v. Freeman, a case that established the federal government's power to set and enforce immigration rules. The Immigration Act of 1891 then created a commissioner of immigration inside the Treasury Department. Authority shifted to the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and to the Department of Labor after that department split in 1913. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, known as the INS, was established in 1933. In 1940, as worries about national security grew, immigration and naturalization services moved under the Department of Justice.

  The 1st of March 2003 closed that long chapter. On that date the Homeland Security Act of 2002 dissolved the INS, along with the United States Customs Service, which had sat under the Treasury Department. Their functions passed to three new bodies inside the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Those bodies were Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and ICE. The reshuffle followed the September 11 attacks of 2001.

  ICE inherited pieces of both old agencies. From Customs came criminal investigative and intelligence resources. From the INS came investigative, detention and deportation resources. The Federal Protective Service joined as well. The result was the largest investigative arm of Homeland Security and a contributor to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

  Some of what ICE was handed did not stay. Asa Hutchinson moved the Federal Air Marshals Service from the Transportation Security Administration to ICE in 2003. Michael Chertoff reversed that, officially approving its return on the 16th of October 2005. The Federal Protective Service left for the National Protection and Programs Directorate, effective the 28th of October 2009. Air and Marine Operations, which had come over from Customs in 2003, went to CBP in 2004, partly because of a 500 million dollar budget dispute between the two agencies.

  In February 2005, ICE launched Operation Community Shield, a national effort aimed at violent transnational street gangs. The program leans on an unusual power, the authority to remove criminal immigrants, including legal permanent residents.

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• 3. Two Agencies Under One Roof

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  In 2018, nineteen senior HSI officials wrote a letter asking to leave ICE. They were special agents in charge, the most senior officials in each investigative division, and they addressed DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. They argued that HSI's investigative mission was repeatedly hamstrung by ICE's civil immigration enforcement. Many jurisdictions limited their cooperation with HSI because it shared a roof with the politically charged work of Enforcement and Removal Operations, known as ERO. The signers asked that HSI be rebuilt as a stand-alone agency, like the Secret Service. The administration ignored the letter.

  Homeland Security Investigations has more than 10,300 employees, spread across 30 offices in the United States and 52 international offices. About 6,000 of them are special agents, which makes HSI the second-largest investigative service in the country after the FBI. Their cases range from money laundering and cybercrime to art theft and antiquities smuggling. In fiscal year 2020, HSI agents made 31,915 criminal arrests and rescued or identified 1,012 child exploitation victims. They also seized 6,195 pounds of fentanyl and 1.8 billion dollars in currency and assets from criminal organizations. In 2006, an HSI effort called Operation Flicker found that government employees, including dozens of Pentagon staff and contractors with high-level clearances, had downloaded child pornography.

  Twenty HSI field offices keep a Special Response Team, a federal SWAT element. It began under the Customs Service as the Warrant Entry and Tactical Team and took its current name in 1998. As of January 2020, ICE counted 34 full-time duty officers and 269 collateral duty officers across the teams. Candidates must shoot 90 percent or better with multiple firearms in full tactical gear. Those chosen train as "Green Team" members before a certification course at Fort Benning, Georgia. The teams have also helped after Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

  ERO is the other half, and it is the part most people mean when they say ICE. Its officers arrest, detain and remove people who are in the country illegally. Its Fugitive Operations Teams hunt people who skipped immigration proceedings and still have outstanding deportation warrants. Because staffing is limited, those teams typically focus on people with serious criminal convictions. ERO also runs the Secure Communities program, which flags removable immigrants in jails by checking fingerprints against FBI and Homeland Security databases. A division called ICE Air charters planes to send deportees home, using 10 aircraft in 2017 and 12 by 2026.

  ERO's reach depends heavily on local police. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act lets ICE train state and local officers to perform immigration enforcement. Agreements under it grew from 135 in January 2025 to 649 in June 2025. Sanctuary cities go the other way, generally refusing to honor ICE requests to hold people beyond their normal release time. In early 2017, President Trump ordered that such cities lose federal grants, but a federal district court in Northern California struck the order down by November of that year.

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• 4. Presidents and Priorities

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  Between 2009 and 2016, the Obama administration deported a record 2.4 million undocumented immigrants. Janet Murguía, president of National Council of La Raza, gave the president the nickname "Deporter-In-Chief". ICE data showed that about 40 percent of people it deported in 2015 had no criminal conviction. A change in how deportations were counted, begun under the Bush administration, partly explains the record totals.

  Shortly after taking office in 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order to add 10,000 people to ICE's staff. The agency had largely prioritized people charged with serious crimes under Obama. Now it was told to target anybody it believed had entered the country illegally. Arrests rose substantially, including arrests of U.S. citizens, and high-profile raids reached workplaces, places of worship and schools. By 2020, a growing number of Democratic lawmakers were calling for ICE to be abolished.

  During Joe Biden's presidency, roughly 4 million removals and expulsions were recorded at the U.S.-Mexico border, counting repeat crossings by the same individuals. An analysis by the American Immigration Council covering February to November 2021 found that 49.8 percent of detainers fell in the "other" category of priority. As of October 2023, ICE held approximately 30,000 people in detention. Critics also objected to a rising use of solitary confinement.

  The second Trump administration opened with a rollback. On the 22nd of January, DHS announced it was ending an Obama-era directive that had protected migrants in sensitive places such as hospitals, courtrooms, funerals, weddings and schools. The administration also set daily arrest targets for ICE. Between January and December 2025 it arrested over 328,000 people and deported nearly 327,000.

  The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on the 4th of July 2025, changed the agency's scale. It gave ICE more funding than any federal law enforcement agency in U.S. history, and more than the federal prison system. Recruitment incentives included a 50,000 dollar sign-on bonus and 60,000 dollars of student loan forgiveness for sworn police officers. ICE started the term with over 20,000 employees, and DHS set out to recruit 10,000 more. According to the source, 5,000 personnel from other federal agencies and 21,000 National Guard troops also helped make arrests.

  Training shrank as hiring grew. The basic ERO academy had run 13 weeks, with a 72-day basic course. In August 2025 ERO training was cut to eight weeks, and academy training fell to 47 days, then to 42 days in September. Internal documents in 2026 showed that 240 hours, roughly 40 percent of instructional time, had been cut. That included 100 hours of hands-on training and 56 hours of firearms training. The Atlantic reported that the minimum age to join had been lowered to 18.

  By November 2025, at least half of ICE's top leadership had been fired or reassigned. Many were replaced with Border Patrol officials. The Chicago Tribune described the shakeup as part of a push to increase deportations at all costs, noting that Border Patrol methods were less targeted than ICE's.

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• 5. Detention

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  As of December 2025, ICE held 68,440 people in detention, nearly 40,000 of whom had no criminal record or only pending charges. ICE reported using 225 detention facilities in the fiscal year that began on the 1st of October 2025. The United States maintains the largest immigrant detention infrastructure in the world. The ICE Health Service Corps, made up of about 1,000 staff, provides direct patient care to approximately 13,500 detainees in 21 facilities.

  In April 2017, President Trump closed the Office of Detention Policy and Planning. That office had maintained the National Detention Standards, detailed rules for treating immigration detainees differently from criminal inmates. The standards stopped appearing in new jail contracts.

  Conditions have drawn sustained criticism, including allegations of rotten food, overcrowding, poor sanitation, abuse and multiple deaths. The Intercept published a Homeland Security inspector general report showing 1,224 sexual abuse complaints in immigration custody between January 2010 and June 2017. Only 2 percent were investigated, contrary to ICE's claims. In December 2025, Amnesty International published a report on the Florida facility nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" and on Krome. It concluded that routine shackling and confinement in a 2x2 foot cage-like "box" constitutes torture.

  Camp East Montana drew its own scrutiny in 2025. During its first 50 days, ICE's own detention oversight unit found that conditions violated at least 60 federal standards. Three detainee deaths were reported within 44 days. An autopsy ruled the death of 55-year-old Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos a homicide caused by asphyxia.

  Some people in custody were never supposed to be there. From 2012 to early 2018, ICE wrongfully arrested and detained 1,480 U.S. citizens, and some spent months or years in detention. A 2018 Los Angeles Times investigation traced the errors to incomplete, error-prone databases and lax investigations. More than two dozen citizens sued ICE for wrongful arrest between 2008 and 2018, having been held for anywhere from one day to over three years.

  Under the 2018 zero tolerance policy, nearly 3,000 minors were separated from their parents or accompanying adults at the border. John Sandweg, a former head of ICE, told NBC News that the gap between a parent's deportation and a child's could stretch to years. Some foster families later won full custody of migrant children without notifying their parents.

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• 6. Surveillance and Masks

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  In 2025, reports surfaced that ICE agents were using a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify. According to Homeland Security documents, it draws on photos taken at airports when people enter and leave the country. It can return a name, a date of birth, a possible citizenship status and whether a visa might have expired.

  In September 2025, ICE signed a 10 million dollar contract with Clearview AI, its largest with the company to date. The second largest, 2.3 million dollars in 2021, also bought facial recognition software that scrapes social media images. ICE also revived a 2 million dollar contract with Paragon Solutions, whose Graphite tool can reach encrypted apps on phones. The deal was signed under Biden, paused under a 2023 executive order, and reactivated in 2025. A 30 million dollar no-bid contract went to Palantir Technologies for "ImmigrationOS", a system that merges government and private data to prioritize deportations.

  Politico reported in December 2025 that planned surveillance purchases would total at least 300 million dollars. It read that, together with looser data guardrails, as a shift toward American critics of ICE officers' behavior. Acting director Todd Lyons said ICE would investigate anti-ICE protester networks, vowing "to track the money". Efforts have also pulled records from agencies including the SSA, the IRS and HHS into immigration enforcement. In June 2025, twenty states sued, alleging that DOGE's access to Medicaid and benefit data was used to facilitate raids.

  The balaclava became the most visible symbol of the agency. Tom Homan, Border Czar under Trump, defended it, saying "ICE officers wear a mask because they've been doxxed by the thousands". California responded with the No Secret Police Act, an anti-mask law for federal agents. In February 2026 a district court judge blocked it, because it applied to federal agents and not state officers. In March 2026, Washington and New Jersey passed laws banning masks for all law enforcement officers, federal agents included.

  The rest of an agent's kit is more conventional. The SIG-Sauer P320C has been the standard sidearm since 2017, and agents must qualify with their weapons every three months. Non-lethal options are an expandable metal baton and pepper spray.

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• 7. Minnesota and the Courts

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  In December 2025, ICE began Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. Local police and journalists described an escalation in the severity of tactics, along with harassment of observers and the detention of U.S. citizens. About 3,000 people were arrested.

  On the 7th of January 2026, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis. On the 24th of January, ICU nurse Alex Pretti was pepper-sprayed, restrained, shot and killed by DHS agents. He had tried to protect a woman shoved to the ground by federal agents. Government statements afterward made claims that contradicted video taken by other protesters. Democratic officials in Congress tried to reform ICE and CBP, but Republicans opposed them.

  Federal judges had been losing patience for months. After raids in Los Angeles, judges found that ICE was engaging in racial profiling, and ICE ignored a court order to stop. In November 2025, Judge Sara L. Ellis found "widespread misrepresentations" in official statements defending use of force during Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. A Reuters review of six violent encounters found official accounts later contradicted by video and other evidence.

  In January 2026, Patrick J. Schiltz, chief judge for Minnesota, wrote that ICE had disobeyed more federal directives in a single month than "some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence". He attached a list of 97 court orders ICE had disobeyed in 74 immigration cases since the 1st of January. The Los Angeles Times reported that a loss of credibility had led to repeated defeats in court. By February 2026, The New York Times reported that judges found the administration ignoring long-standing legal interpretations requiring release of many detainees who post bond.

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• 8. The Public Verdict

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  The Occupy ICE movement began on the 17th of June 2018, outside Portland, Oregon. It started as a vigil and grew spontaneously as more people showed up. It spread to Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego and New York, with growing coordination between groups. On the 1st of August 2019, protesters began a month-long drumming protest outside the San Francisco ICE office to demand an end to family separation. On the 14th of September 2019, Close the Camps NYC led a sit-in at the Microsoft store on 5th Avenue, targeting technology companies that aided ICE.

  Protest returned in 2025. ICE raids in Los Angeles in June sparked what Reuters called the strongest domestic backlash to Trump since he took office. An August 2025 Pew Research Center poll ranked ICE the third least favorably viewed of 16 agencies, with 49 percent approving and 40 percent disapproving. Views were the most polarized of any agency: 72 percent of Republicans approved, while 78 percent of Democrats disapproved. After Renée Good's killing, tens of thousands marched in cities across the country, and on the 30th of January protesters held a "National Shutdown". A nationwide Times/Sinema poll on the 22nd of January found 63 percent of Americans thought ICE had gone "too far". A Fox News poll on the 28th of January found 58 percent thought it "too aggressive", up 10 points since July 2025.

  By January 2026, politicians, journalists and scholars increasingly called ICE a paramilitary force. Erica De Bruin, writing in The Conversation, said it fit the description of a highly militarized police force. She also noted that ICE's union endorsed Trump in 2020, with 95 percent of members in agreement. The Economist traced a long American history of such forces, from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to the Texas Rangers' 1918 Porvenir massacre. It judged none as large, well-equipped or organized as ICE. Critics have also invoked the Gestapo, though others warn such comparisons risk oversimplifying and trivializing history.

  The agency's publicity campaign added fuel. It was run by political appointees in their 20s and leaned heavily on memes. The Atlantic reported that vehicle wrappings in the color of Trump's private plane cost roughly 100,000 dollars each, with 2,000 more planned. The Southern Poverty Law Center found white nationalist and anti-immigrant imagery in DHS recruitment materials for ICE.

  Culture reacted too. Bruce Springsteen released "Streets of Minneapolis" on the 28th of January 2026, and several celebrities criticized ICE at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. Large protests erupted in Milan when ICE agents were reportedly assigned to the security team for Vice President JD Vance at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Police used tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators near the Olympic Village.

  The next flashpoint may be the ballot box. ICE has historically stayed away from polling places, and Todd Lyons said "There's no reason for us to deploy to a polling facility". Still, rhetoric from Trump's orbit about federal agents near polls ahead of the 2026 midterms raised alarms. The White House said it had no formal plans but did not rule it out, and multiple states are pursuing legislation to block federal immigration agents from their polling places.

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