The second Trump administration has expanded immigration detention in the United States as part of the administration's mass deportation policy. On January 23, 2025, ICE began to carry out raids on sanctuary cities, with hundreds of immigrants detained and deported. The Trump administration reversed the policy of the previous administration and gave ICE permission to raid schools, hospitals and places of worship. Fears of ICE raids have negatively impacted the agriculture, construction, tourism, and hospitality industries. ICE agents conducting raids frequently travel in unmarked vehicles, wear plainclothes and facial coverings, and refuse to identify themselves or present warrants. The administration ordered the re-opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to hold potentially tens of thousands of illegal aliens, but has faced logistical and legal difficulties using it as an immigrant camp. The majority of detentions have been for non-violent matters. Courts have ruled more than 4,400 times that the Trump administration is detaining people illegally. Several US citizens have been detained and deported. In October 2025, around 3,000 people were detained by ICE in the Chicago metropolitan area during Operation Midway Blitz. Government officials refused or were unable to confirm their whereabouts. In July 2026, 49,571 people were arrested by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the highest monthly arrest total during Trump's second presidential term by that point.

Immigration raids

As early as January 23, high-profile ICE raids occurred in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Miami, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., detaining 538 people. The mayor of Newark claimed that ICE raided a local establishment and detained illegal immigrants as well as citizens, including a veteran, without a warrant.

Initial immigration raids were widely described by both critics and promoted by the Trump administration as purposefully aggressive, with Trump saying they "haven't gone far enough". Videos of ICE and CBP agents smashing car windows, tackling mothers, and lobbing tear gas at citizens and peaceful protesters were quickly shared on social media leading to immense criticism and numerous lawsuits.

Raids in 2025 and early 2026 targeted specific cities and regions, and included Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, Operation Charlotte's Web in North Carolina, Operations Swamp Sweep and Catahoula Crunch in Louisiana, Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, Operation Salvo in New York City, and Operation Catch of the Day in Maine.

On September 4, an immigration raid occurred at a Hyundai plant in Georgia detaining approximately 475 workers in what was described as the largest immigration enforcement operation carried out at a single location by Homeland Security. The raid led to a diplomatic row between the United States and South Korea, and analysts described it as deterring foreign investment in America.

Extensive criticism ensued following a "military-style" ICE raid at a residential apartment complex in Chicago's South Shore in the early morning hours of September 30, 2025. The operation featured agents rappelling from black hawk helicopters at 1am, tossing flashbangs at families, and rounding up and zip-tying adults, children, and U.S. citizens.

After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump replaced Kristi Noem with Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary. Mullin has declared that he seeks to implement Trump's mass deportation agenda without generating the controversy associated with ICE's earlier, regionally targeted operations.

Immigration arrests surged in late June, 2026, with over 10,000 people arrested over the course of 5 days. At least 9 people have been killed by gunfire from ICE agents, although not all of the incidents took place during ICE operations.

Administrative warrants

Most immigration arrests are carried out under non-judicial administrative warrants that do not authorize use of force for nonconsensual entry onto private property or other nonpublic spaces, and are authorized by immigration judges, immigration officers, or agencies within the executive branch rather than a federal district judge or magistrate judge. In January 2026, Whistleblower Aid filed an anonymous complaint with Congress disclosing an internal May 2025 ICE memorandum articulating a policy directive approved by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons that authorized the use of administrative warrants for arrest by ICE agents in places of residence that the complaint contends violates the Fourth Amendment. While the memo states that DHS did not rely exclusively on administrative warrants for alien arrests in places of residence historically, the memo also states that the DHS general counsel's office had recently concluded that doing so was not prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, or immigration regulations. While the memo asserts that administrative warrants are not search warrants and have a knock-and-announce requirement, the memo also asserts that ICE agents are permitted to forcibly enter residences to make arrests and detentions pursuant to a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals, a federal district judge, or a federal magistrate judge.

The complaint alleges that the memo was not widely circulated within the agency and exposure to it was highly controlled, with some DHS employees being asked to return the memo after reading it; one of the two whistleblowers was only allowed to view the memo alongside a supervisor, required to return it after reading, and barred from taking any notes. However, the complaint alleges that the memo's content has been used to train ICE officers deployed on the nationwide immigration raids and continues to be required guidance for new ICE officers and trainees—despite other written DHS training materials explicitly contradicting the memo's administrative warrants guidance. How widely the memo's guidance was applied was unknown at the time of the complaint; the Associated Press reported that documents it reviewed of a forced entry and arrest in Minneapolis on January 11, 2026 showed the ICE agents involved only procured an administrative warrant. In a press statement addressing the memo after its disclosure, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin stated that persons affected by administrative warrants received "full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge. The officers issuing these administrative warrants also have found probable cause. For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement."

The memo has been criticized by legal scholars and immigration lawyers, and at least one lawsuit has been filed to block its implementation. Administrative warrants are authorized and generally required for immigration arrests under Section 1226(a) of Title 8 of the United States Code, while Section 1357(a) of Title 8 provides a plain view of illegal entry exception and a reason to believe and likelihood of escape exception to Section 1226 that allow for warrantless arrests. Lyons issued a subsequent memo pursuant to Section 1357(a) in January 2026, while a federal judge in Oregon ruled in a class-action lawsuit against DHS the following month that immigration officers may not conduct warrantless arrests without a likelihood of escape. While the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of administrative warrants in Abel v. United States (1960) and the constitutionality of Section 1226 in Demore v. Kim (2003), the Congressional Research Service (CRS) referenced the Court's decisions in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States (1973) and United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975) in reports released in 2021 and 2025 as establishing that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures" extends to arrests and detentions to enforce civil immigration law in the interior of the United States—where the border search exception does not generally apply and without regard to an alien's immigration status.

Referencing the Supreme Court's decision in Maryland v. Pringle (2003), the 2025 CRS report noted further that lower federal courts have interpreted the reason to believe exception of Section 1357(a) for warrantless immigration arrests to be equivalent to the Fourth Amendment's probable cause requirement, and have applied the Supreme Court's holding in Graham v. Connor (1989) that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the use of excessive force in criminal law cases over immigration arrests. While noting the Supreme Court's holdings in California v. Greenwood (1988) and Florida v. White (1999) permitting warrantless searches in public spaces due to the absence of a reasonable expectation of privacy, the 2025 CRS report references lower federal court rulings that nonetheless held that ICE agents must have probable cause of the presence of an unlawful alien and the exigent circumstance of a likely escape to conduct a warrantless arrest, as well as conflicting lower court rulings on conducting warrantless surveillance for immigration enforcement in places of worship due to restrictions from the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Noting the Supreme Court's rulings in Stoner v. California (1964), Mancusi v. DeForte (1968), Schneckloth v. Bustamonte (1973), Marshall v. Barlow's (1977), Payton v. New York (1980), California v. Ciraolo (1986), and Riley v. California (2014), the 2025 CRS report cites lower federal court rulings that have held that administrative warrants do not confer the same legal authority as judicial warrants, and have ruled that ICE agents have violated the Fourth Amendment when forcibly entering private homes without a judicial warrant and where no established Fourth Amendment exceptions applied. However, referencing the Supreme Court's rulings in Brignoni-Ponce, Florida v. Royer (1983), Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Delgado (1984), and Muehler v. Mena (2005), the 2025 CRS report noted that while the Court has held that while interrogation alone without detention about a person's citizenship in public places does not violate the Fourth Amendment, the Court has held that brief detentions without arrest, traffic stops, and stop-and-frisks require at least reasonable suspicion based on the totality of the circumstances to be conducted without a warrant (including in proximity to the borders of the United States). Following these precedents, the CRS notes that lower federal courts have ruled that the reasonable suspicion standard does not authorize brief detentions by immigration officers strictly due to suspected alienage (but instead requires suspected unlawful presence), nor detaining workers during interrogation.

Arrest warrants

The administration has "expanded" warrantless arrests which multiple judges have ruled against.

Facial recognition technology