Are ice agents using race to stop people
Executive summary
Evidence from national reporting, civil-rights groups, local officials and legal analysts shows that ICE and related federal immigration officers have increasingly relied on perceived race, language, appearance and location as factors in stops and detentions—especially after a September 2025 Supreme Court order that removed a prior injunction limiting such tactics—while direct admission of an agency-wide “race-first” policy is not present in the sources reviewed [1] [2] [3]. Local complaints, lawsuits and congressional inquiries document numerous incidents in which U.S. citizens and lawful residents of color were stopped or detained, prompting civil-rights litigation and political demands for accountability [4] [5] [6].
1. Reports from the ground: communities and local leaders say stops are racialized
Multiple local news outlets and community organizations have collected first‑hand accounts of U.S. citizens and permanent residents—especially Latino, Somali and Black people—being stopped, questioned, or detained by ICE and CBP officers in ways residents interpret as racially motivated, including incidents involving off‑duty police officers and long‑term residents who were asked for papers despite citizenship claims [1] [4] [7] [8] [9]. Law enforcement leaders in Minnesota and organizers in Chicago describe rising complaints and behavior changes—people sleeping with passports or avoiding daytime travel—consistent with communities perceiving race as a trigger for enforcement [1] [4].
2. Courts and law: a pivotal Supreme Court action changed enforcement contours
Legal observers and immigrant‑rights groups say a September 2025 Supreme Court order lifted a prior judicial restriction and explicitly allowed immigration agents in at least one region to consider perceived race or ethnicity among a set of factors when deciding whom to question, a development that advocates argue has cleared legal space for practices that look like racial profiling [2] [10]. Commentators from Brookings and the American Immigration Council warn that the decision effectively permits broader suspicion criteria—including appearance, accent, workplace and location—raising the risk that citizens and lawful residents who are people of color will be wrongfully stopped [3] [2].
3. Litigation and political pressure: the ACLU and members of Congress respond
Civil‑rights litigation and congressional demands for answers underscore institutional pushback: the ACLU filed a class action in Minnesota alleging that ICE and CBP engaged in suspicionless, warrantless arrests of people perceived to be Somali or Latino, and more than 60 members of Congress sought explanations from DHS about enforcement tactics tied to race [5] [6]. These legal and legislative responses treat the complaints as systemic rather than isolated incidents and aim to force documentary evidence, policy explanations, and potential remedies [5] [6].
4. Historical context and policy mechanisms that enable racialized stops
Longstanding mechanisms—such as cooperative local agreements and prior episodes like Maricopa County’s sweeps—show how immigration enforcement tools can be used in ways that translate appearance into enforcement action, a pattern scholars say is now accelerated by the recent court guidance and executive directives; analysts warn this produces predictable harms to Latino and other communities of color [11] [3]. Advocacy groups and legal centers explicitly characterize the current environment as a resurgence of profiling risks that compels renewed oversight [10] [2].
5. Limits of the public record: what the reporting does not (yet) show
The sources document widespread allegations, legal rulings, and policymaker concern, but they do not contain a contemporaneous, unambiguous ICE admission of an agency‑wide policy to use race as the primary criterion for stops; rather, reporting shows courts permitting perceived race to be part of a broader suspicion analysis and numerous incidents that civil‑rights groups argue amount to racial profiling [2] [1] [5]. Without internal ICE directives or a transparent, agency‑level statement in the provided reporting, it is not possible here to prove an official written “race‑first” policy, only to report that practices and rulings have made race an allowed or de facto factor in stops and that communities and courts are raising alarm [2] [5].
6. Bottom line
Available reporting and legal analysis show that perceived race, language and appearance are being used—explicitly or implicitly—as factors in ICE and CBP stops, and that a significant Supreme Court action removed a prior judicial barrier that limited such tactics; community complaints, lawsuits and local officials frame these developments as racial profiling with concrete harms to citizens and residents of color, while the public record here lacks a single internal ICE document admitting a formal race‑first instruction [1] [2] [5] [3].