What are ICE's official enforcement priorities for raids?
Executive summary
ICE’s enforcement guidance publicly emphasizes prioritizing people who pose public‑safety or national‑security threats and those with final orders of removal, while field operations are framed as flexible and responsive to changing conditions like spikes at the border [1] [2]. Community groups and news reporting, however, document broad workplace and community raids that have swept up large numbers of people — for example, reporting thousands arrested in the Los Angeles area since June 2025 and large single‑site worksite actions such as about 475 arrests at a Georgia construction site — creating a sharp disconnect between official priorities and on‑the‑ground outcomes [3] [4].
1. What ICE officially says its priorities are
ICE’s public materials state that Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) prioritize enforcement actions based on agency and Department of Homeland Security priorities, funding and capacity, and that operations are “flexible” to respond to events such as border surges, law changes, pandemics and disasters [2]. Independent explainers and legal guides summarize ICE’s stated prioritization as focusing on individuals who pose public‑safety threats or who have already been ordered removed [1]. Those two sets of language — administrative flexibility and named categories (public safety; final orders) — form the agency’s official baseline for deciding whom to target [2] [1].
2. How community advocates and watchdogs frame reality
Community organizations tracking raids say ICE tactics are broader and more unpredictable than the narrow official categories would suggest. The Immigrant Defense Project and partners document patterns of deceptive and aggressive tactics across hundreds of incidents and maintain an ICEwatch map and tactics reports to help communities prepare and resist [5] [6]. These groups argue that raids often sweep up co‑workers, family members and others who were not the stated targets [5], a claim that state and local reporting corroborates [3].
3. The gap between priorities and practice: examples from 2025 reporting
Mainstream reporting shows large‑scale operations that do not look limited to only convicted criminals or those with final removal orders. Congressional testimony and reporting in Los Angeles describe months of federal raids that resulted in around 9,000 arrests in the LA area since June 2025, and witnesses said people without criminal records and even U.S. citizens were affected [3]. Worksite enforcement under the current administration restarted in 2025 and has included both targeted audits and massive single‑site actions, such as a roughly 475‑person arrest at a Hyundai construction site in Georgia, described as the largest single‑site worksite enforcement action to date [4].
4. Why ICE says operations are ‘flexible’ — and what that enables
ICE’s public statistics page frames ERO operations as adaptable to changing operational pressures — a purposeful description that allows the agency to pivot resources toward border surges, employer audits or other priorities as leadership directs [2]. That flexibility gives ICE legal and operational cover to mount both targeted arrests and larger, multi‑site enforcement campaigns; critics say the phrasing masks the practical expansion of raids into communities and workplaces [2] [5].
5. Competing narratives and political context
Journalists and city officials have reported clashes and pushback in immigrant‑friendly localities where large protests have disrupted planned operations [7] [8]. Local leaders call raids traumatic and politically motivated; ICE and DHS frame their work as enforcing federal laws and protecting public safety [3] [2]. Sources disagree about whether recent surge activity represents a return to past large‑scale workplace raids or targeted enforcement focused strictly on criminal cases — ICE’s public guidance points to the latter priorities while multiple independent trackers and news outlets document broader sweeps [1] [5] [4].
6. What’s missing or unclear in public reporting
Available sources do not mention a single, current written ICE internal memo that lists an exclusive, narrowly defined set of people who may be targeted for every raid. ICE’s public dashboards and guidance emphasize broad criteria and operational flexibility but do not provide a definitive list that would rule out broader workplace or community operations [2]. Likewise, while community groups document tactics and outcomes, complete agency‑level data on every raid, including rationale for each operation, is not presented in the materials cited here [5] [9].
7. Practical takeaway for communities and journalists
Because ICE’s stated priorities (public‑safety threats, final orders) coexist with operational flexibility that has led to mass workplace and community raids in 2025, civic groups advise preparation, legal readiness and real‑time monitoring [5] [10]. Reporters should cite both ICE’s official guidance and independent tracking when describing an operation: the agency’s priorities provide the formal rationale, while trackers and local reporting reveal how those priorities play out in practice [2] [5] [3].