Fact check: How many large-scale ICE raids have occurred in residential areas in 2024?

1. Why the question is harder than it sounds — data gaps and definitions matter

Counting "large-scale ICE raids in residential areas in 2024" requires a clear, consistent definition of what counts as "large-scale" and what qualifies as a "residential-area raid." ICE’s publicly released enforcement data for FY2024 emphasize aggregate removals and arrests by quarter rather than event-by-event breakdowns of operation type or geographic setting, leaving no authoritative, labeled tally of residential raids for calendar year 2024 in the available ICE summaries ^[1]. Journalistic reconstructions therefore must rely on local reporting, FOIA records, and NGOs’ incident-tracking, each of which uses different thresholds for scale and for what constitutes a residential operation, creating systematic undercounting and inconsistency ^[1].

2. What the official FY2024 numbers do show — enforcement rose, but context is missing

ICE’s FY2024 quarterly enforcement snapshots show a substantial increase in removals and arrests in certain quarters compared with FY2023, with Q2 and Q3 noted for near‑70% and other marked year‑over‑year upticks; these figures confirm heightened enforcement activity but do not map those removals to the venue of the arrest—workplaces, border settings, prisons, or homes—so they cannot be translated directly into a count of residential raids ^[1]. Researchers and reporters therefore treat the agency’s rising totals as a signal of greater activity while seeking event-level corroboration from local sources and multiagency disclosures ^[1].

3. Local reporting finds residential sweeps — but mainly documented in 2025

Detailed, high-profile accounts of large-scale residential-area ICE actions, such as operations involving multiagency assets and dozens of arrests in apartment complexes, are documented in late 2025 reporting on Chicago’s South Shore and the broader Operation Midway Blitz. Those articles describe heavy federal tactics, detentions of residents (including some U.S. citizens), and dozens to hundreds of arrests during coordinated blitzes — but their publication dates and event timing place these episodes in 2025 rather than 2024 ^{[2] [3] [4]}. This temporal mismatch means these widely reported residential raids are not evidence of comparable 2024 events unless corroborated by contemporaneous 2024 reporting.

4. Differing tactics across states complicate national tallies

ICE’s own internal breakdowns and third‑party analyses indicate a geographic split in tactics: red states tend to see more arrests inside prisons and jails, while blue states report more community arrests — workplace raids and surprise detentions — which can include residential settings. This pattern suggests that the frequency of residential-area operations is not uniform nationwide and that a national count must account for jurisdictional variation and sanctuary policies that influence where ICE conducts community-based enforcement ^[5]. Aggregated national snapshots therefore obscure important local differences relevant to how many residential raids occurred in 2024.

5. Media and NGO incident-tracking are necessary but inconsistent sources

Because ICE does not publish an event-level residential-raid log, independent tallies rely on cross-referencing local news stories, community groups, and law‑enforcement releases. These sources can be timely but are methodologically heterogeneous, reporting different thresholds for "large-scale" and sometimes conflating workplace stings, targeted arrests, and broader sweeps. The available compiled analyses in the dataset do not show a corroborated national count of large-scale residential raids in 2024; instead, they document rising enforcement and selective community operations captured in 2025 reporting ^{[1] [2]}.

6. What we can state with confidence from the provided material

From the supplied sources we can assert three points with evidentiary support: 1) ICE enforcement and removals increased materially in FY2024 compared with FY2023 according to quarterly data; 2) high-profile, multi-dozen arrest residential-area raids that drew extensive coverage were reported in late 2025, particularly around Chicago’s Operation Midway Blitz; and 3) the available ICE statistics do not contain a labeled count of "large-scale residential raids" for 2024, which prevents a definitive numeric answer based solely on these documents ^{[1] [2]}.

7. Where to look next to produce a precise count if needed

To derive a defensible numeric count for 2024 would require assembling event-level data from multiple repositories: ICE FOIA releases and operational logs, local law enforcement press releases, contemporaneous local journalism archives, and NGO incident trackers for 2024. Cross-referencing those datasets would resolve definitional variance and validate whether any widely defined "large-scale" residential sweeps occurred in 2024. The documents at hand do not include that reconciled, event-level dataset and so cannot substantiate a single-number answer for 2024 ^[1].

8. Bottom line for readers seeking a short answer

Based on the assembled materials, there is no documented, authoritative count of large-scale ICE raids in residential areas for 2024 in the provided sources; official FY2024 data show increased enforcement but do not enumerate residential raids, while the prominent residential-area sweeps documented in the record occurred and were reported in 2025 ^{[1] [2]}.