For more than 15 years, before they conducted any operation to arrest an immigrant in the United States, officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division have been required to fill out a form with details about their target — name, appearance, known addresses and employment, immigration history, any criminal history and more — and give it to a supervisor for approval.
This year, in a sign of how the agency has moved from targeted enforcement to broad street sweeps under the Trump administration, that policy has been ended, six current and former officials and agents of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News.
“It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’” one of the former ICE officials said.
The policy shift sheds light on the way ICE is now operating ahead of anticipated immigration crackdowns in Chicago and Boston, and it helps explain the seemingly spontaneous nature of recent arrests in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Both Darius Reeves, the former director of ICE’s Baltimore field office, and two former officials with DHS, under which ICE falls, said the form, known as a field operations worksheet, had been required for nearly every arrest the division made. The only exceptions, they said, were instances in which ICE was called out to assist local law enforcement agencies.
The exact date of the change is unclear, but it happened before this summer. Reeves, who left ICE in May, said that he was made aware of it before he left and that it was communicated down from DHS leadership. The decision was made because of a perception that the worksheet is “a waste of time,” he said, but he said he believes it is actually “a very valuable necessity” now “bypassed … so they could keep constantly flooding the streets” with officers. Reeves said that, even though the workshops are no longer mandatory, he knows some officers are still using them out of concern for future legal liability.
Top Trump administration officials, like border “czar” Tom Homan, have said they are prioritizing detaining and deporting immigrants with criminal histories — people whom Homan calls “the worst of the worst.” But that kind of focused work is at odds with President Donald Trump’s promises to conduct the largest mass deportation in American history, sending “millions and millions” of people out of the country. As a result, ICE has been under immense pressure to quickly increase the number of immigrants it is arresting, with less regard for whether they have any criminal histories.
NBC News has reported that in a meeting in May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller berated ICE officials, threatening to fire the leaders of field offices that conducted the fewest arrests each month if the agency did not begin making at least 3,000 arrests a day.
Since then, ICE has moved toward conducting broad sweeps in places frequented by immigrants —for instance, Home Depot parking lots, where some undocumented people congregate hoping to be hired for construction and other work — and neighborhoods where they live. Social media users capturing viral videos from around the country have alleged officers are profiling rather than specifically targeting individual immigrants.
ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Targeted vs. profiling
Immigration enforcement is likely to ramp up soon in Chicago, where there are several predominantly Latino neighborhoods. DHS is building a staging area at a naval base north of the city and bringing in additional ICE and Border Patrol agents to conduct more immigration arrests this month, two federal law enforcement sources familiar with the plans said.
ICE officers are working on a list of “high-value” targets to arrest in Chicago, one of the current DHS officials said, such as immigrants who have committed crimes.
Scott Shuchart, who was ICE’s assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy during the Biden administration, said the efforts in Los Angeles and Washington have also involved ICE’s making more random arrests to boost numbers. He did not have knowledge of the policy change to discontinue the worksheets but said that, previously, they were used to show officers had done their “homework.”
“There would be a reason that you go for Peter rather than Paul,” he said. “They are now interested in numbers, and if you are interested in numbers, you do things like wandering around racially profiling people.”
DHS and ICE have denied that they are racially profiling. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has told reporters that “every single operation” ICE conducts is based on “investigative work and on casework.”
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons recently told NBC News that the agency is not profiling but rather conducting “targeted enforcement operations.”
One of the former DHS officials said that terminology, though, does not mean ICE officers know in advance whom they are arresting.
Another of the former ICE officials said: “They’re bending the definition of ‘targeted’ to conform with their operations. By ‘targeted,’ they might mean going to an area where they can find immigrants.”
And in July, a federal judge in Los Angeles issued a temporary restraining order blocking ICE from conducting “roving patrols” and from relying on people’s races or other factors, like their speaking Spanish, as reasons to detain them.
An analysis by David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, found that ICE arrests in the Los Angeles area fell 66% after the judge’s order. Data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project, Bier noted, showed that ICE had made 756 arrests in the area in the week leading up to the judge’s order. Two weeks later, the number was at 258.
On Monday, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to lift the judge’s order and the restrictions it had placed on stops in the Los Angeles area.
Similar operations appear to have been taking place in Washington. Raquel Sánchez told NBC News that she had been seeing federal officers around her neighborhood in August. Then, early one morning, she and her husband, Jesus Muñoz Colorado, were driving to work when they were stopped by a group including ICE officers. Seven unmarked cars surrounded their vehicle, blocking it from moving forward, she said, and then officers knocked on the car door and told the couple to roll down the windows or they would shatter them.
It is not clear whether Sánchez and Colorado were specifically targeted for arrest, but they were not outside of their home when they were stopped, and Sánchez said that as far as she could tell, the officers did not know their names. Video of the stop provided to NBC News shows them telling officers that they are going through the process of applying for U visas, which is given to victims of certain crimes and people who have information about those crimes and can be helpful to law enforcement, as well as their family members.
Sánchez and Colorado were handcuffed and taken to a local ICE facility. She spoke with NBC News after she was released; he is still in detention.
Their lawyer, Julia Toro, who has been practicing immigration law in Washington for 20 years, said that since the immigration crackdown there began, she has had eight clients without criminal backgrounds who have been arrested.
“The officers ask them, ‘Do you have any documents and do you have any papers? Show me,’” she said. “It’s not like they know who they are picking up. They are arbitrary stops.”
In a statement provided to a reporter with Telemundo 44 in Washington, which is also part of the NBC News Group, an ICE spokesperson said, “Jesus Munoz-Colorado and his wife Raquel Noemi Sanchez-Monge, are illegal aliens with no lawful status to remain in the United States.” The spokesperson also said that neither “have any pending visas to lawfully remain in the U.S.”
Liability for officers?
Several of the current and former ICE and DHS officials who told NBC News about the end of the policy mandating use of the field operations worksheets also said that the worksheets were not about just planning or establishing justification for arrests: They also protect the officers. For example, Reeves said that though the form does not include a section about it, officers would often write and attach another sheet with information about whether someone targeted in an operation could be armed, information that helps keep officers safe.
The form could also help protect officers legally, they all said.
“For a professional law enforcement agency, you don’t just fly willy-nilly. Crossing your T’s, dotting your I’s, checking with OPLA,” one of the former DHS officials said, referring to the agency’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor. “They [ICE officers] may not believe it, but it’s truly protecting them to make sure they are actually operating within their legal bounds.”
Paul Hunker, who previously was ICE’s chief counsel in Dallas, said the worksheets officers filled out could be used to protect them in lawsuits. Officers could be sued for civil rights violations if they make arrests without probable cause, he said.
“What’s critical is that ICE has to articulate probable cause to arrest, so the worksheet might be helpful for them if they get challenged on that,” Hunker told NBC News.
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