(NewsNation) — More than 1.4 million migrants who have previously been ordered to leave the country are among those being targeted for apprehension by federal immigration officials as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation mission.
As federal officials seek to ramp arrests, increased collaboration between Immigration Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement agencies, including criminal investigators within the Internal Revenue Service, is changing how migrants with criminal backgrounds are found and taken into federal custody.
Former Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Victor Avila said devoting more bodies to the nationwide search moves agencies closer to achieving higher levels of national security.
“It’s becoming a well-oiled machine,” he told NewsNation.
What areas are ICE targeting?
The biggest hotbeds for the 1.46 million targeted migrants include Miami (156,559), Los Angeles (143,672) and New York (134,645), according to data obtained exclusively by NewsNation from the Department of Homeland Security. Atlanta was the only other region where more than 100,000 migrants who had been previously ordered to leave the U.S. were found to be living.
Although federal agencies know where these migrants are located, making arrests requires complicated investigations by ICE’s 25 regional field offices.
Avila told NewsNation that the operations are “methodical” and that contrary to public opinion, agents are not looking to apprehend innocent people, which has been among the complaints lodged by officials in sanctuary cities and within migrant advocacy groups.
“They’re not randomly looking (and saying), ‘You look Hispanic – I’m going to come get you,’” the former HSI special agent said.
How ICE makes arrests
The agency accesses numerous databases, including commercial databases, motor vehicle and driver’s records as well as utility records to locate “removable non-citizens,” according to ICE’s website.
Each of ICE’s field offices works from informational packets that are generated by officers working within that agency’s “criminal alien program.” Agents assigned to that team use databases and information from state or local law enforcement and court dockets to compile target lists for that region.
Data is also collected by statewide offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which provide information for informational packets.
The order in which migrants are sought after can be determined by a variety of factors, including the age of a migrant’s case, that person’s criminal history or the type of crimes that particular office may be targeting, such as sex offenses or other violent crimes.
Data compiled by the Migration Policy Institute shows that the majority of migrant arrests are custodial, meaning that ICE takes migrants who were already in the pipeline after being arrested or identified by state or local law enforcement.
In 2024, custodial cases resulted in the majority of the 113,431 arrests that were made by ICE, the agency’s annual report states.
Comparatively, 33,243 arrests fell into the “at-large” category, meaning that migrants were located while living in communities around the country.
That job falls to local ICE agents who are now partnering with organizations such as the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies who are tasked with taking criminal migrants into custody.
“This is a good thing,” Avila said of the collaboration. “It reminds everyone in federal law enforcement that you all actually play on the same team. You may happen to have different insignias and different letters in front of your names, but we’re all on the same team combating the same thing.”
Surveillance operations can often last days and sometimes weeks, John Fabbricatore, the former director of ICE’s Denver Field Office, told NewsNation. He said agents use residential and automobile information to help agents locate targeted migrants.
How ICE works in ‘sanctuary cities’
Because sanctuary cities like Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles prohibit their police departments from cooperating with immigration enforcement, federal agents must often work on their own to make arrests.
Some lawmakers working within sanctuary cities fear that resistance to working with ICE can lead to bigger problems.
“It’s outrageous that we allow and give cover to those kind of individuals,” Chicago Alderperson Raymond Lopez told NewsNation. Lopez was one of two Chicago alderpersons who tried to change the city’s sanctuary city law, which was soundly defeated by the city council.
He said that a city’s sanctuary laws also allow communities to protect those ICE is searching for, making tracking migrants on the dockets even more difficult.
President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has repeatedly said that although migrant criminals are the target of the mass deportation efforts, other immigrants who entered the country illegally may be swept up if they are found in the company of those being sought.
Once Trump took office, restrictions on sensitive locations such as schools, houses of worship and hospitals were lifted, giving federal agents more room to work.
Opponents of the ICE raids maintain that the agent’s mere presence in local communities has struck fear among local residents.
“What this administration is attempting to do is to get us to surrender our humanity,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters after Homan visited the city when ICE conducted raids. “We’re not going to do that in Chicago.”
Despite the marching orders ICE receives, Fabbricatore argued there are still rules that need to be followed.
“It’s all about safety and about being humane. We’re not stacking these people in warehouses,” he told NewsNation, adding, “The American public doesn’t understand that. They think you arrest an illegal alien, and you’re just giving them the boot across the border. It doesn’t happen that way.”
NewsNation’s Ali Bradley contributed reporting to this story.
