Trump’s mass deportations are impossible without racial profiling
As ICE ramps up street arrests, court records show that agents are disproportionately going after Latinos.
by Gaby Del Valle
May 29, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - NOVEMBER 6: U.S. Border Patrol arrests search a neighborhood for an individual they were chasing on November 6, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. U.S. Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents are in Chicago and surrounding suburbs during “Operation Midway Blitz” to enforce immigration laws. (Photo by Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Border security czar Tom Homan keeps threatening to “flood” New York City with ICE agents. But a new investigation shows that ICE has been quietly ramping up arrests in the New York area already — and disproportionately targeting Latino neighborhoods. The City, a local nonprofit news organization, found 430 street arrests in the metropolitan area between October 2025 and mid-March. Of these, 93 percent involved Latinos, even though they only make up 66 percent of the local undocumented population. More telling: Many of those arrested weren’t the intended targets at all. Agents grabbed them while looking for other people, according to court records, and detained them because they supposedly looked sort of like the person they were after. ICE is ramping up enforcement in cities where there haven’t been reports of high-profile raids — and agents seemingly have carte blanche to arrest people based on the color of their skin.
After widespread backlash to ICE’s Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, where a federal judge recently ruled that agents made warrantless arrests largely based on race, Homan said ICE is now using “smarter enforcement” in the Twin Cities and elsewhere. ICE has reportedly shifted to “targeted” arrests — but The City’s reporting shows that agents will eagerly arrest anyone they come across while looking for their targets. Though ICE has plenty of surveillance tools at its disposal it can use to track people down, this equipment is apparently far less effective than racial profiling. And even if other judges rule against ICE’s racist practices in the future, there may be little recourse.
