Can ICE detain American citizens

1. How the law frames ICE’s power to detain

Federal immigration law and ICE operational policy are written to detain “aliens” who are removable or subject to mandatory detention and to hold people assessed as flight or public‑safety risks; ICE says custody decisions are discretionary when mandatory detention does not apply ^{[3] [6]}. Those statutory and administrative authorities do not, on their face, permit the deportation of U.S. citizens, but the statutory framework empowers officers to arrest and detain individuals they reasonably suspect to be non‑citizens while their status is investigated ^{[6] [1]}.

2. Mistaken detentions: documented cases and scale

Investigations and watchdog reporting document hundreds of incidents where U.S. citizens were held by immigration agents; news outlets and nonprofits have cataloged dozens to hundreds of such episodes across recent years, and ProPublica and the BBC noted more than 170 instances during a single period of the previous administration ^{[2] [4]}. Government detention numbers have surged in 2025–26, with ICE reporting tens of thousands in custody on single days and independent trackers highlighting that a large share have no criminal convictions — a context in which wrongful citizen detentions have been reported ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

3. What happens when a citizen is detained — remedies and realities

Legal remedies exist: habeas petitions and court challenges have been filed and won against detention practices, and federal judges in some districts have rejected mandatory‑detention policies ^{[5] [10]}. In practice, families and lawyers report delays in access to counsel and phone calls in some cases; advocates warn that citizens have been held days or weeks before release even when documentation of U.S. birth or naturalization was available ^{[11] [12]}.

4. Competing narratives: ICE’s stated goals vs. civil‑rights warnings

ICE and some administration officials publicly frame enforcement as targeting criminals and those with removal orders, even as data show a rising percentage of detainees lack criminal convictions, and ICE has moved to expand detention capacity and hiring ^{[9] [3]}. Civil‑rights groups such as the National Immigration Law Center and ACLU describe sweeping, “indiscriminate” arrests and prolonged detentions that have occasionally included U.S. citizens and veterans, framing the problem as systemic rather than isolated ^{[12] [13]}.

5. Political context and hidden incentives

The current surge in enforcement is tied to policy choices and funding increases that prioritize interior arrests and larger detention populations; Reuters reported major budgetary expansions and operational hiring that will increase arrests and detention capacity, a dynamic critics say creates incentives that can amplify mistakes and civil‑liberty harms ^[9]. Advocates and some state lawmakers are pushing back with litigation, state statutes limiting local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and expanded habeas filings to counteract what they call overreach ^{[10] [5]}.

6. Bottom line — what to take away

ICE does not have lawful authority to remove lawful U.S. citizens, but agents can and have detained citizens when they suspected non‑citizenship, and those detentions have sometimes been prolonged; statutory discretion, operational pressure from enforcement priorities, overwhelmed systems, and inadequate verification procedures produce real risk of wrongful custody that the courts and advocacy groups are actively challenging ^{[1] [2] [5] [12]}. Reporting and litigation show remedies exist, but the evidence also shows the problem is ongoing and tied to broader enforcement policy choices and expanded resources for detention ^{[9] [8]}.