Can ICE detain or arrest US citizens during immigration enforcement actions?
Executive summary
ICE policy expressly prohibits detaining U.S. citizens, yet multiple investigative reports and data analyses show that agents have nonetheless held American citizens during immigration enforcement operations, sometimes for hours or days and sometimes despite citizens asserting or producing proof of their status [1] [2] [3]. The record compiled by journalists, advocates and members of Congress has prompted calls for formal investigations and exposes a gap between written policy and enforcement practice [1] [2].
1. What the rulebook says — policy versus practice
Department of Homeland Security guidance and ICE policy reportedly bar detaining U.S. citizens as immigration detainees, and members of Congress have cited that explicit prohibition while demanding records and investigations into apparent violations [1]. ICE’s public enforcement dashboards emphasize its mission to arrest “immigration violators” and categorize detainees by country of citizenship and criminal history, presenting a system designed for noncitizens but not for U.S. citizens [4]. Those institutional statements establish that, on paper, U.S. citizens are not supposed to be processed into immigration detention systems [1] [4].
2. What newsroom investigations have documented
Reporting by ProPublica and corroborating local outlets has identified more than 170 instances in which immigration agents held people later identified as U.S. citizens, including detentions during large raids and protests, and some cases in which detainees were unable to contact counsel or family for extended periods [2] [3]. Local reporting has chronicled individual stories — people handcuffed after raids, others “disappearing into the system” for days before release — underscoring that citizen detentions have occurred repeatedly across jurisdictions [5] [6].
3. How operations and tactics create risk for mistaken detention
Investigative accounts and analyses of recent mass enforcement operations describe tactics — surprise street arrests, plainclothes agents, rapid transfers to a sprawling detention network — that increase the chances of misidentification and of U.S. citizens being swept up, even when they assert citizenship on the spot [7] [8]. Journalistic scrutiny of raids has also highlighted scenes where agents appeared to prioritize rapid arrests or even filmed operations, prompting critics to argue that speed, theater and pressure to meet arrest quotas can override careful verification of status [9] [10].
4. Scale, data and the broader enforcement context
ICE’s own arrest and detention numbers show a massive upscaling of interior enforcement during the period covered by the reporting, with tens of thousands of bookings and record-high detention populations; this growth—alongside data showing more than 1,000 ICE arrests a day in parts of the country—helps explain how errors and civil‑rights incidents can become more frequent when enforcement is expanded [11] [12] [13]. At the same time, ICE’s management of detainees across county jails, private centers and ad‑hoc facilities demonstrates the logistical complexity of interior enforcement that advocates say can obscure accountability when mistaken detentions occur [7] [13].
5. Accountability, legal recourse and political pressure
Because journalists, members of Congress and civil‑rights groups have publicly documented citizen detentions and demanded records, there is an ongoing push for investigations into how and why U.S. citizens ended up in immigration custody despite policies meant to prevent that [1] [2]. Reporting cites lawsuits, congressional letters and calls for internal review; however, the sources do not provide a comprehensive inventory of outcomes for each documented case or a legal determination across the board about whether specific detentions were lawful [1] [2].
6. Bottom line — direct answer to the question
Legally and administratively, ICE is not supposed to detain U.S. citizens as immigration detainees — the agency’s policy framework and congressional critics both state that prohibition [1] [4]. Practically, however, documented instances demonstrate that ICE agents have detained and held people who were later identified as U.S. citizens during enforcement actions, sometimes for prolonged periods and sometimes despite assertions or proof of citizenship, which has sparked public outcry and demands for investigation [2] [3] [5]. The sources establish the fact of these detentions and the policy contradiction; they do not provide a full legal accounting of every incident or a definitive assessment of why each error occurred [2] [1].