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How do ICE enforcement priorities determine who gets targeted for arrest?
Executive Summary
ICE enforcement priorities shape who gets arrested by combining formal written priorities—focusing on national security, border security, and public safety—with wide frontline discretion and, in recent years, apparent political pressure that has shifted operations toward broader sweeps and higher arrest targets. Official guidance dating from 2014 through 2025 frames a targeted, discretionary approach, while reporting and advocacy analyses from 2023–2025 document departures from those priorities in practice, including mass-arrest targets and actions affecting people without serious criminal histories [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. Why the Rulebook Matters — Formal Priorities and What They Say
The formal policy record establishes the baseline for who ICE should target: DHS and ICE memoranda from 2014 and the Biden-era interim guidance enumerate Priority 1 focuses on national security, border threats, and serious criminal convictions and Priority 2 on certain misdemeanors and recent immigration violators, while emphasizing prosecutorial discretion and case-by-case decision making. These documents state that enforcement actions are not automatic and require consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, resource limitations, and legal constraints; the 2021 interim guidance explicitly notes that priorities do not mandate arrest or removal and that actions outside the priorities require advance review [1] [2]. The 2025 memos on enforcement in protected areas and civil enforcement reiterate the importance of coordination and individualized assessments, underscoring that the written framework remains centered on targeted enforcement of threats to safety and security [3] [6].
2. What Reporters and Advocates Found — Evidence of Broader Sweeps
Independent reporting and organizational analyses from 2023–2025 document significant deviations between policy and practice, showing large-scale arrest goals and operations that swept beyond statutory priorities. Reuters reporting in June 2025 says ICE instituted a higher daily arrest target (from 1,000 to 3,000), prompting arrests described as indiscriminate and focused on easily reachable populations rather than the “worst of the worst” [4]. Advocacy groups’ analyses from 2025 show that many people arrested lacked serious criminal records—AILA reported only 7% of arrests were for violent crimes and 65% had no criminal record, and the American Immigration Council found a substantial share of enforcement actions categorized as “other” outside stated priorities [5] [7]. These findings reveal a gap between written priorities and the patterns of arrests on the ground, particularly where political directives or operational targets pressured ICE units.
3. Who Bears the Brunt — Patterns and Populations Targeted
Available analyses identify consistent patterns in who gets targeted when enforcement departs from stated priorities: noncitizen workers, people who comply with immigration procedures, and populations in jurisdictions with limited local cooperation. AILA’s report highlights arrests of people attending hearings, USCIS appointments, and workplaces, including mistaken arrests of U.S. citizens during worksite actions, indicating enforcement focusing on convenience and visibility rather than dangerousness [5]. The American Immigration Council’s 2023 review showed geographic variability — areas like New York saw a high proportion of “other” category actions—suggesting that discretion, local enforcement relationships, and resource allocation influence who is actually targeted [7]. Reuters and advocacy reporting tie these operational patterns to policy changes and internal pressure to increase arrests, which pushes ICE toward broad sweeps affecting community members beyond the highest-priority categories [4] [8].
4. What ICE Guidance Still Requires — Discretion, Coordination, and Protections
Despite reports of broader enforcement, the internal guidance emphasized across memos remains discretionary decision-making, coordination with local authorities, and minimization of collateral impacts, especially around protected spaces like courthouses and schools. The 2025 enforcement memos reiterate requirements for credible information about targets and careful case-by-case determinations, and they call for advance review when actions fall outside stated priorities [3] [9]. The written framework also instructs officers to weigh public safety and civil liberties, which provides a legal and policy standard that can be used to challenge operations seen as overbroad. The presence of these rules highlights that discrepancies between priorities and actions are not due to lack of policy but to how discretion and enforcement metrics are interpreted and implemented in practice [2] [9].
5. Why Discrepancies Persist — Pressure, Metrics, and Local Variation
The evidence points to three drivers of the gap between policy and practice: political pressure and internal targets, the use of arrest quotas or production metrics, and substantial local variation in cooperation with ICE. Reuters and advocacy reports describe rise in arrest targets and political direction from senior White House advisers to expand sweeps, producing pressure that can override discretionary safeguards [4] [8]. The American Immigration Council’s data on “other” category actions and AILA’s arrest profiles show operational outcomes consistent with such pressure, while ICE memoranda repeatedly note resource constraints and the need to prioritize—factors that create incentives to pursue high-volume, easily executed arrests [7] [5] [2]. Local law enforcement non-cooperation in places like Los Angeles further shapes where and how ICE operations occur, producing geographically uneven impacts and shaping who gets targeted in practice [4] [7].