Has ICE changed their way of procedures with Trump in office?
Executive summary
The record shows that ICE’s tactics, priorities, and oversight mechanisms shifted markedly under President Trump’s administrations: internal restraint policies were rolled back, detention and deportation were expanded, and accountability measures were weakened—all producing a more aggressive, broader interior enforcement posture [1] [2] [3]. At the same time, the administration has publicly emphasized a return to focusing on people with criminal records and defended surges of agents as targeted operations, creating a contested narrative about whether tactics actually narrowed or simply changed form [4] [5].
1. The big operational pivot: guidance, arrests and detention
Within weeks of Trump taking office in his first term, longstanding internal ICE guidelines that limited arrests at sensitive locations — schools, hospitals, places of worship and courthouses — were rescinded, removing former guardrails on where and whom agents could arrest [1] [6]; in the second term the administration ordered ICE to “maximize” detention and stopped routine discretionary releases, producing a dramatic fall in releases and historic growth in the detained population as the agency funneled vastly more people into detention centers (discretionary releases fell 87% in one period; ICE’s detention system expanded to record levels) [2] [5].
2. Tactics in the field: from street sweeps to targeted operations — a mixed record
Reporting and legal records show a mixed picture: Reuters reviewed a directive that ordered ICE officers to prioritize immigrants with criminal charges or convictions, framing a shift toward “targeted operations” and away from broad street stops [4]; yet contemporaneous accounts from Brookings, TIME and others document interior sweeps, large deployments of DHS agents to places like Minneapolis, and operations that detained many people with no criminal record, suggesting practice did not uniformly mirror the stated narrower focus [7] [1] [5].
3. Oversight and accountability: rollback and courtroom pushback
The administration curtailed or slowed accountability measures: it sought cuts to ICE body‑camera expansion and placed DHS oversight staff on leave while redeploying agents to enforcement surges, moves critics say undermined transparency [3]. Courts and lawmakers pushed back: a federal judge ordered the administration to allow unannounced visits to detention facilities and threatened contempt in at least one case where ICE resisted court orders about detainee hearings, indicating legal constraints on some practices [8] [9].
4. Political and legal theater: litigation, protests and differing narratives
The enforcement surge provoked mass protests and litigation; critics and municipal leaders described a militarized, lawless approach, while the White House and DOJ framed restrictions on agents as hazardous and sought appellate relief to restore broad tactics in confrontations with protesters [10] [11] [7]. Both sides use selective incidents—fatal officer‑involved shootings and viral videos—to buttress opposing claims about necessity and excess [7] [3].
5. Resources and institutional change: funding, structure and data opacity
Analysts document dramatic resource shifts and ambiguous data that complicate comparisons across administrations: budgets for border and interior enforcement swelled in Trump’s second term according to media and policy groups, ICE’s detention funding rose, and limited data releases by the administration made benchmarking removals and arrests difficult, feeding disputes over whether practices truly changed or simply intensified [12] [5] [2].
6. Bottom line and alternative interpretations
Substantively, ICE has changed procedures under Trump: rescinded constraints on where arrests occur, expanded detention and deportation priorities, attempted to limit transparency tools like body cameras, and redeployed federal agents for broad interior enforcement [1] [2] [3]. Yet the administration’s signed directives and public messaging have at times emphasized refocusing on criminal convictions and tighter targeting, producing a persistent dispute between stated policy and documented practice; courts, oversight bodies and journalists continue to be the arbiters of which account prevails [4] [9] [8].