Can ICE target individuals based on their country of origin or immigration status alone?

1. What ICE says its targets are — and the official evidence

ICE’s public materials and case examples emphasize targeting individuals wanted for crimes, fugitives, known or suspected terrorists, and people on watch lists; ICE statistics are published with arrests broken down by country of citizenship and criminal-history categories, showing the agency tracks nationality in its operational reporting ^[1]. The department’s press releases on specific arrests also identify country of origin when describing removals — for example, the Uzbekistan national arrested in Kansas — which demonstrates ICE uses citizenship as an element in describing enforcement results, though those releases frame actions around criminal or national-security allegations ^{[4] [5]}.

2. Evidence of enforcement that appears to rely on origin, ethnicity, or status

Human Rights Watch and several news outlets documented operations in 2025 that, in practice, targeted people based on perceived race, ethnicity or national origin and used tactics that swept up people without criminal records. Human Rights Watch said detention campaigns "relies in large part on detaining people based on their perceived race, ethnicity, or national origin" in Los Angeles and elsewhere ^[2]. Reporting from The Guardian and other outlets highlights internal ICE guidance and emails pushing for expanded arrests and “collateral” arrests — detaining people present at a scene even if they were not the original targets — contributing to more people with no criminal records ending up in detention ^{[3] [6]}.

3. Collateral arrests, workplaces and public sweeps — how nationality/appearance becomes a proxy

Multiple investigative and local reports show ICE has conducted large worksite and neighborhood sweeps where selection criteria were broad, leading to arrests of people with no criminal histories and sometimes U.S. citizens. Examples include major worksite actions (Hyundai site), raids at car washes and parking lots, and operations where agents were told to “turn the creative knob up” to increase numbers, with collateral arrests rising as a result ^{[7] [6] [8]}. Independent reporting and watchdogs say those practices produce de facto targeting of groups by where they work and by appearance or language, even if internal policy nominally requires individualized suspicion ^{[2] [9]}.

4. Legal and practical limits: what courts, advocates and reporting say

Advocates and some courts have pushed back on generalized administrative warrants and broad worksite sweeps; a federal district court was reported to reject a “Blackie’s warrant” for a worksite raid as likely unconstitutional ^[7]. Civil-rights groups and state attorneys general have filed suits alleging misuse of benefit and health data to facilitate raids, arguing these practices disproportionately affect mixed-status families and certain communities ^[10]. At the same time, ICE leaders and the White House defend enforcement as focused on criminals and national security threats, and ICE continues to publish data emphasizing criminal-history categories ^{[1] [5]}.

5. Data picture: nationality listed, but criminality often ambiguous

ICE’s own statistical releases list arrests by country of citizenship, which shows the agency compiles nationality data for enforcement purposes ^[1]. Yet independent reporting and government-released datasets in 2025 show a notable increase in detainees with no criminal record, meaning that while nationality is recorded, many detained people are not being held for documented criminal convictions — a gap that critics say creates the conditions for nationality-based or status-based targeting in practice ^{[3] [6]}.

6. Competing narratives and political context

The administration frames its enforcement as restoring rule of law and focusing on “criminal illegal aliens,” while critics — Human Rights Watch, advocacy groups and multiple news outlets — say the surge in raids, collateral arrests, and use of perceived national origin or ethnicity as a cue constitutes racial or national-origin profiling ^{[4] [2] [6]}. Local impacts — protests, lawsuits, and state pushback — reflect that the debate is not just technical: it is also political and legal, with different actors asserting enforcement necessity versus civil-rights violations ^{[11] [10]}.

7. Bottom line for your original question

Available sources show ICE’s formal enforcement priorities center on criminality, national-security risks and fugitives and that ICE records arrests by country of citizenship — but reporting and watchdog investigations document widespread practices (collateral arrests, worksite raids, operations relying on perceived race/ethnicity) that result in people being targeted or detained on the basis of nationality, appearance or immigration status in practice ^{[1] [2] [3]}. If you are asking whether ICE is legally permitted to arrest solely because someone is from a particular country or because of immigration status: available sources do not provide a single definitive legal ruling here; they do show both ICE’s stated policy and substantial reporting of operations where country of origin or status functions as a central factor ^{[1] [2]}.