David J. Bier
Illegal profiling accounts for a substantial portion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in 2025. While ICE has other tactics to arrest peaceful immigrants—such as during immigration hearings, appointments, and check-ins—ICE agents are deliberately targeting workers in heavily Latino jobs and neighborhoods, sometimes based on its community tip line where residents claim to “see” illegal immigrants in their areas, but more often based on nothing at all.
This policy is a threat to the rights of all people in the United States.
ICE Is Arresting Thousands of People with No Reason to Target Them
New data obtained from ICE by the Deportation Data Project drives home how frequently Latino immigrants are arrested off the streets without any recent prior contact with law enforcement. The screenshot below shows what the data look like. Each row represents an individual arrest and provides details about the arrest method, criminal history, and citizenship status. The most notable aspect of the new data is that they provide the exact location of each person’s apprehension.
The key takeaway is that ICE is arresting thousands of people in random locations—what it calls “non-specific” or “general” areas—who had no prior contact with law enforcement: the telltale sign of illegal profiling. Normally, ICE makes arrests only after the suspect has been identified in some other way. For instance, they were arrested by local police and their name was checked against the government data, or they were going to an appointment related to their status, so ICE knew they would be there. But in these cases, ICE is arresting people who weren’t going to appointments or committing criminal offenses that would put them on ICE’s radar, as well as people who had not been ordered removed from the country, giving ICE a reason to seek them out.
Example of Detailed Records for Individual ICE Arrests, June 2025
Since January 20, ICE has conducted about 15,000 street arrests of immigrants who had no criminal convictions, charges, or removal orders. Incredibly, nearly half (7,000) occurred in the month of June alone: 90 percent of them were immigrants from Latin America.
Street arrests refer to arrests in non-specific locations and exclude anyone in jails, prisons, offices, courts, police departments, detention centers, facilities, or anyone otherwise in the custody of any agency. Because ICE rarely sends agents to specifically arrest noncriminal immigrants whom it cannot promptly remove, and because it is difficult to locate and identify people who have not committed crimes or gone through removal proceedings, this is the likely population of people ICE has targeted through illegal street profiling.
These types of arrests without charges, convictions, or removal orders on the streets increased from 7 percent of a relatively small number of arrests in December to 23 percent of a massive number of arrests in June. Again, one in five ICE arrests is a Latin American on the streets without a criminal history or a removal order.
Although some street arrests of noncriminals did take place before, it is not believable that ICE could suddenly identify this many people on the streets without profiling them when they weren’t previously identified by law enforcement.
ICE’s Illegal Profiling Is Well Documented
In any case, we know ICE is involved in illegal profiling because in July a district court ordered ICE to stop these activities in the Los Angeles area, and the appeals court upheld that order this week. The data do not extend past June 26, so we don’t yet know if the rulings had any effect, but regardless, they apply only to Los Angeles.
As Tom Homan described it, ICE and Border Patrol are detaining people “based on the location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions like…the person walks away.” According to the Wall Street Journal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told ICE in mid-May to stop “develop[ing] target lists of immigrants” and just “go out on the streets” and arrest people “right away” at Home Depots or 7‑Elevens. At the same time, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations acting leader Marcos Charles told his agents to “turn up the creative knob up to 11 and push the envelope…If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing.”
The results of the White House’s May order are clearly evident when looking at the rolling weekly totals for street arrests of Latinos without criminal convictions, pending charges, or removal orders. Although we know that there was profiling happening even before May, the mid-May spike is different. The weekly totals increase sharply after the inauguration from a pre-inauguration weekly total of 118, but then they fall and level off at around 450 until mid-May. After Miller’s meeting, however, street arrests of Latin Americans increase more than threefold, from 450 to over 1,500 in June.
How is this happening on the ground? Here’s a description of ICE’s activities in the district court order that attempted to block this conduct in Los Angeles:
Officers approach suddenly and in large numbers in military style or SWAT clothing, heavily armed with weapons displayed, masked, and with their vests displaying a generic “POLICE” patch (if any display at all). Agents typically position themselves around individuals, aggressively engage them, and/or shout commands, making it impossible for individuals to decline to answer their questions. When individuals have tried to avoid an encounter with agents and officers, they have been followed and pushed to the ground, sometimes even beaten, and then taken away.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals describes a specific incident:
Vasquez Perdomo and Osorto sat on the bench, and Villegas Molina stood next to them. Suddenly, four unmarked cars pulled up and surrounded them. The cars were large and black with tinted windows and had no license plates. The doors opened and men in masks with guns started running at them aggressively. One of the men had a “large” military-style gun. The masked men wore regular clothes, they had no visible badges, and they did not identify themselves.
Vasquez Perdomo, Osorto, and Villegas Molina were afraid they were being kidnapped. Vasquez Perdomo tried to move away but was immediately surrounded by several men with guns. They grabbed him, put his hands behind his back, and handcuffed him. Then, one of the men asked him for identification. Vasquez Perdomo said in English, “I have the right to remain silent.”
…Osorto did not know the men were government agents. Terrified, he tried to run. The men yelled “stop” but did not identify themselves as law enforcement officers. Soon, one of the men caught up to Osorto, pointed a taser over his heart, and yelled, “Stop or I’ll use it!” Osorto stopped immediately, and the man handcuffed him. The unidentified, masked, and armed men put Vasquez Perdomo, Osorto, and Villegas Molina into separate cars and drove them to a parking lot where they interrogated them further. Eventually, the men chained each plaintiff at the hands, waist, and feet and took them to a Los Angeles detention center. The men never identified themselves to the plaintiffs…
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also relies on its community tip line, where people can claim to “see” illegal immigrants. ICE Special Agent Rebecca González-Ramos told NPR that ICE knows that some accusations against employers come from “competitors” seeking “a lot of revenge,” but she sees that as an opportunity. In Maine, Border Patrol responds to sightings of “possible illegal aliens” and then makes arrests. In Florida, Fox News reported on a “first of its kind” operation that started with a tip line complaint in a retirement community:
ICE moves from house to house, approaching workers. ICE describes the interaction as a consensual and optional conversation since they did not have a warrant. Agents question their legal status and those who couldn’t provide valid immigration documentation were fingerprinted….Tampa agents talked to 361 construction workers yesterday, but arrested 33.
In other words, ICE admits that its profiling was accurate less than 10 percent of the time. Although ICE claims the encounters are “consensual,” they are not. Workers who try to leave are threatened or tackled. One landscaper accosted by Border Patrol outside an IHOP was pepper-sprayed, tackled, and beaten after he “refused to answer questions” and tried to walk away—and that’s according to DHS. He was the father of three US Marines and had no criminal history. Yet another landscaper was tackled inside a California surgical center, and although the agency initially claimed in a press statement that his arrest was part of a “targeted operation,” its court affidavit stated the agents were doing a “roving patrol” and he was not identified as “illegal” until later, after his arrest. He also had no criminal history.
ICE Profiling Targets US Citizens and Legal Immigrants
It is no surprise that US citizens are also being tackled and arrested. Here’s a case just minutes away from the others where, after tackling the US citizen, the agents shrug and say, “Why were you running?” ICE tackled and arrested a US citizen and veteran, George Retes, and detained him for three days following a worksite raid in California. US citizen Leonardo Garcia Venegas, who was tackled by agents at a jobsite in Alabama in May, said they dismissed his REAL ID as fake. The casual dismissal of identification is also a common refrain in these racial profiling cases of US citizens.
Agents tackled a 32-year-old US citizen, Andrea Velez, on her way to work in June. The 4’11” woman was then accused of assaulting the ICE agent by putting her hand out as the agent ran her over. The agents claimed that they were chasing some other people to figure out if they were in the country illegally when they crashed into her. They asked Velez about her legal status after literally picking her up and carrying her away. These bogus assault charges against US citizens are becoming a disturbingly common tactic to justify racial profiling mistakes. Fortunately, the charges against Velez and several others were dismissed. Another US citizen, Job Garcia, was also tackled and beaten in a similar manner and was detained for 24 hours.
An American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit regarding these tactics in Los Angeles involves US citizens detained by DHS for questioning. As the appeals court decision upholding the lower court’s ban on these tactics in the city explained:
Jason Brian Gavidia is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in East Los Angeles and identifies as Latino. On the afternoon of June 12, he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of a tow yard in Montebello, California, where he saw agents carrying handguns and military-style rifles. One agent ordered him to “Stop right there” while another “ran towards [him].” The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American—and they repeatedly ignored his answer: “I am an American.” The agents asked Gavidia what hospital he was born in—and he explained that he did not know which hospital. “The agents forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” An agent asked again, “What hospital were you born in?”
Most of that incident is recorded on video. Another US citizen named in the lawsuit was arrested and removed from his job because he did not carry his passport, only his driver’s license.
A separate ACLU lawsuit involves a legal permanent resident who was arrested by Border Patrol when going to work in California’s Central Valley, and a judge in that part of the state also issued an order blocking these illegal tactics. As the appeals court notes in its decision, stops are unconstitutional when they are based on broad criteria that would sweep up numerous innocent people. Setting aside the unconstitutionality of these detentions and arrests, however, the Immigration and Nationality Act itself prohibits ICE and Border Patrol from even interrogating anyone about their right to be in the United States without a warrant or reasonable basis to believe that they are an “alien.”
Mass deportation is a socially and economically damaging goal regardless, but it’s certainly not a goal for which we should sacrifice a sliver of our liberty or the Constitution. Only time will tell whether ICE and Border Patrol can continue to get away with these tactics.