Do ice agents arrest us citizens and deport ..
Executive summary
ICE is legally tasked with arresting, detaining and removing noncitizens, but multiple independent reviews and news investigations show U.S. citizens have been arrested, held and in some documented cases deported — despite agency denials that it “deports U.S. citizens” [1] [2] [3]. The Government Accountability Office reported up to 70 U.S. citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020, and journalists and advocacy groups have compiled many more instances of citizens detained or mistreated during enforcement actions [2] [4] [5].
1. Legal mandate vs. real-world mistakes: ICE’s role and limits
By statute and mission, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations focuses on noncitizens who violate immigration laws and typically places such people into removal proceedings or executes final orders of removal [6] [1], but government auditors and outside researchers have found the agency’s records and screening processes imperfect enough that citizens can be misidentified and swept into enforcement workflows [2] [4].
2. What the watchdogs found: deportations of people later determined to be citizens
A Government Accountability Office review concluded that up to 70 people who were U.S. citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020 — a striking finding because citizens cannot lawfully be removed under immigration law — and investigators have highlighted recordkeeping gaps that make the true scale uncertain [4] [2].
3. Arrests, detentions and documented abuses reported by journalists
Investigations by ProPublica, AP and others have compiled dozens to hundreds of cases in which people later identified as U.S. citizens were arrested or held by immigration agents, with allegations of rough handling, denial of phone calls, and pressure to cooperate — reporting that has prompted congressional demands for oversight [5] [7] [8].
4. The agency pushback and competing narratives
Department of Homeland Security and ICE routinely push back on reporting that suggests agency wrongdoing, asserting that operations are highly targeted, that agents are trained to verify status, and that ICE does not arrest or detain U.S. citizens as policy [3]. That official line sits in tension with GAO findings and multiple documented case studies from reporters and legal advocates [4] [2] [5].
5. How mistakes happen: process breakdowns and systemic drivers
Research and reporting point to several mechanisms for citizen arrests: faulty records and databases, reliance on local jail bookings and detainers to flag people, hurried field encounters where agents misidentify someone’s status, and enforcement priorities that expand sweeps — all of which increase the odds of false positives [9] [10] [1]. Independent analyses also note that a substantial share of people ICE detains have no criminal conviction, underscoring how civil immigration enforcement can sweep in noncriminals [11] [10].
6. Political context, oversight and incentives
The spike in interior arrests and detentions under recent enforcement surges — tracked by media and advocacy groups — has produced political pressure to demonstrate results, and critics argue that that pressure can incentivize overzealous field tactics and poor verification, while DHS and ICE emphasize public-safety rationales and deny systemic intent to detain citizens [12] [13] [3].
7. Bottom line and limits of available evidence
The authoritative bottom line is that ICE’s mission is to arrest and remove noncitizens, but documented evidence from the GAO, news investigations and advocacy groups establishes that U.S. citizens have been arrested, detained and in some verified cases deported — even as DHS/ICE publicly deny routine deportation of citizens and point to training and safeguards [2] [4] [3] [5]. Reporting and government audits differ on scale because ICE and CBP recordkeeping is incomplete, so precise totals over time remain contested [2].