Trump’s immigration crackdown reaches New York City and shows its limits

- ADVERTISEMENT -
Share
ICE officers arrest an Ecuadorian man in the Bronx during predawn operations Tuesday in New York. (MUST CREDIT: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

NEW YORK – Under the cover of darkness, 20 teams of federal agents and officers in unmarked cars fanned out across the city Tuesday (Jan. 28, 2025) in one of the largest immigration operations in years.

Hours later, they returned to the New York headquarters of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with many of their targets in handcuffs, including a man wanted for homicide in a foreign country and another with possible terrorist links.

The Trump administration labeled it a success. The result? About 20 arrests.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

President Donald Trump promised to deport “millions and millions of criminal aliens” when he took office last week, and he has directed nearly every federal law enforcement agency and the U.S. military to support that campaign. Immigration arrests are surging across the country as Trump extends large-scale raids in “sanctuary” jurisdictions where authorities limit cooperation with ICE.

Yet the White House’s ambitions have so far outpaced ICE’s infrastructure and ability to deliver on the president’s lofty promises. Arresting suspects in neighborhoods requires surveillance, careful planning and predawn operations to catch them off-guard. ICE has not received a budget increase, and officials say their detention facilities are already nearly maxed out.

The enforcement campaign’s value as an act of political messaging is another matter. On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem arrived in New York to join the ICE teams, along with newly-detailed FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents and U.S. Marshals, who began knocking on doors and making arrests at 6 a.m. Noem wore body armor and cheered an arrest in a social media post. Such operations are usually not publicized by ICE officials until they conclude, out of concern for officer safety.

“Just now. Enforcement operation in NYC. Criminal alien with kidnapping, assault & burglary charges now in custody,” Noem posted on X at 6:13 a.m. with a video. “Dirtbags like this will continue to be removed from our streets.”

Four hours later, she reiterated the message in a three-second video: “We are in New York City this morning. We are getting the dirtbags off these streets.”

An ICE detainee sits in a holding cell after he was taken into custody Tuesday morning in the Bronx. (MUST CREDIT: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

DHS and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

ICE’s New York field office typically has five teams available for street-level operations, officials said, so Tuesday’s “targeted enforcement” campaign quadrupled that number. Multiple federal agencies participated, but the New York Police Department did not. ICE officials said they prioritize migrants with criminal records, but may also arrest people they encounter along the way who do not have legal residency status. Similar operations started over the weekend in Chicago, according to ICE.

The 20 arrests included a Yemeni suspect who officials say appeared on the FBI’s list of suspected terrorists, a suspected human rights violator from Myanmar and a Dominican man wanted by Interpol for an alleged homicide outside the United States. Eight of the 20 do not have criminal records.

ICE invited The Washington Post and other media organizations to observe the New York arrests on the condition that they not disclose the operation ahead of time.

ICE officials say they have always prioritized criminals who pose a threat to public safety. Trump’s election has freed them from limitations on their day-to-day operations put in place by the Biden administration, they say, which took a hands-off approach to immigrants who lacked criminal convictions. ICE officials say they have rarely, if ever, had the support of so many other federal law enforcement agencies.

At one location in the Bronx on Tuesday morning, ICE officers and federal agents arrested a 34-year-old Ecuadorian man with a pending sexual assault charge and a conviction for illegally reentering the United States. ICE officers tapped the man’s door at 6 a.m., then walked him out in handcuffs and drove him to downtown Manhattan for booking.

William Joyce, the acting field office director for New York, said the relatively modest number of arrests across the city Tuesday morning was an indication of the challenge ICE faces when it has to pick up criminal suspects in neighborhoods, rather than the city jails.

Under New York’s sanctuary policies, city authorities generally will only hold suspects for ICE who have been convicted of violent crimes. ICE no longer has an office at the city jail on Riker’s Island.

Joyce said his teams have plenty of choices in selecting targets for expanded operations this week.

“It’s not like New York City has a dearth of criminals,” Joyce said. “It always has made the most sense … to pick up the worst of the worst.”

During President Joe Biden’s term, a record number of migrants crossed the U.S. southern border, and hundreds of thousands headed for New York City, many arriving on buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). It was the largest influx since the Ellis Island era. The city provided hotel rooms, dormitories, counseling and other assistance, an approach that made sure families didn’t sleep on the streets but left New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) warning of a fiscal crisis.

The city has spent more than $5 billion since 2023 on the migrant influx, according to the most recent estimates from the New York State Comptroller.

Street crimes committed by groups of young migrants became a particular concern after several teens were filmed punching police officers during a January 2024 melee. Many alleged offenders are from Venezuela, whose government’s strained relations with Washington have severely limited ICE’s ability to deport criminal offenders there.

On Saturday, the Trump administration told senior ICE officials to operate more aggressively, setting a target of 75 arrests per day for each of the agency’s 25 field offices. On Sunday, the following day, ICE made 1,179 arrests, up from 286 on Saturday, according to totals published by the agency. The agency reported 969 arrests Monday.

Trump top aide Stephen Miller said the 75-arrests-per-day order is “a floor, not a ceiling,” in an interview Tuesday with CNN.

Such quotas increase the potential that officers face pressure to meet numeric targets and cast a wider net that snags immigrants who do not have criminal records. Tom Homan, the former acting ICE director whom Trump has designated the White House “border czar,” has said immigrants with criminal records are the administration’s priority.

The administration has cast these efforts as part of Trump’s mass deportation campaign, although officials will not say how many of those arrested since he took office more than a week ago have actually been deported.

The White House and Department of Homeland Security have circulated photos showing military planes transporting deportees. Those flights have primarily carried recent border crossers, rather than immigrants detained in U.S. cities by ICE.

DHS said more than 7,300 deportees have been returned or removed since Trump took office nationwide, “including hundreds of convicted criminals.” The totals include people sent back across the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as well as deportees loaded onto ICE flights.

“We have fulfilled President Trump’s promise to the American people,” DHS said.

Patrick “PJ” Lechleitner, who retired as ICE acting director this month, said the nationwide operations launched under Trump are the first time in his career he’s seen so many agents and officers from the Department of Justice assigned to help ICE. Seeing FBI agents tasked with civil immigration enforcement duties is “unprecedented,” he said.

“There is a cost to that because they’re not pursuing criminal investigations,” Lechleitner added.

Lechleitner and other former ICE officials say the Trump administration’s arrests may soon exceed ICE detention capacity. The agency has funding to pay for about 40,000 detainees per day and is already nearing that limit.

Bed space is especially tight in the Northeast and the New York metro area, where critics of ICE have campaigned to close detention facilities.

ICE uses jails in the Newark area and in Orange County, New York, and it has about 1,200 beds available several hours away at a facility in central Pennsylvania. Those facilities are nearly full, according to ICE officials.

“They’re going to have to fly or bus them to places with more capacity,” Lechleitner said.

In Chicago, where ICE launched targeted raids Sunday, schools, businesses and community services in heavily immigrant neighborhoods on the city’s south and west sides have seen a drop in attendance, according to local officials.

At the Pilsen Family Health Center, a clinic serving a predominantly Latino population on the city’s south side, Medical Director Luis Rivera said there were more no-shows than normal, with patients canceling or skipping appointments they had waited weeks to schedule.

“Between myself and the other doctors scheduled, about a third of the patients didn’t show up or called to reschedule,” he said. Friday afternoon, the clinic saw roughly half of the patients who were scheduled for appointments.

Those who called to reschedule offered vague excuses. Rivera factored in the bitterly cold weather from last week but said even when it’s raining hard or snowing, cancellations are never so high.

Alderman Brian Hopkins (D), whose 2nd Ward includes parts of downtown, was in the minority of city council members who wanted to change Chicago’s sanctuary city ordinance to allow Chicago police to work with federal immigration authorities in certain cases.

Any hope of compromise, however, was dashed Sunday when multiple federal agencies, including the DEA, showed up without notice to the Chicago Police Department. They brought along TV host Phil McGraw, or “Dr. Phil,” and his crew. Hopkins decried it as a “circus.”

“When the federal government talks about doing some targeted enforcement on people who have been part of organized criminal activity, or who have committed violent crimes, that sounds good,” Hopkins said. “On Sunday, that’s not what they did.”

Hopkins said the scene was confusing and unprofessional and felt like a stunt with the Dr. Phil team in the mix – something that will only antagonize Trump critics in the city and weaken the administration’s credibility with those who are willing to find a way to work together.

“It couldn’t be more counterproductive if they tried. It makes it harder for Democrats who want to address this from a public safety perspective,” Hopkins said. “And I’m afraid that it’s going to get worse.”