Federal agents in immigration operations told to be camera-ready as thousands arrested

(CNN) — The Trump administration’s immigration sweeps that included more than 2,000 arrests in two days and have chilled many immigrant communities were followed by another blitz: A barrage of video and photos from the federal government showing agents in tactical gear and vests emblazoned with “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security” taking cuffed suspects away.

The made-for-TV look of the arrests is not a coincidence.

At least two agencies assisting US immigration officials with the sweeps ordered by the fledgling Republican White House have told personnel to ensure their clothing clearly depicts their respective agency in case they are filmed by journalists, sources familiar with the operations tell CNN.

While it is a common safety practice for agents conducting arrests to wear insignias clearly identifying themselves as law enforcement, even agents on the perimeter of operations conducted across the nation have been specifically instructed by their leadership to wear raid jackets in view of media attention, sources said.

On Sunday, federal agencies released numerous photos on social media of agents in tactical gear conducting purported immigration arrests.

TV talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw announced on social media he was “embedded” with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement team in Chicago as operations began. McGraw released video showing him interviewing the Trump administration’s new “border czar,” Tom Homan, at what was described as an ICE command center.

Inviting a celebrity guest to the Chicago operations was frustrating to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a Democrat, who told CNN’s Jim Acosta his office has not received any notice about the arrests despite working with federal law enforcement in the past.

“I think it’s done for the show, and I think it’s done to upset community and to score political points with those who want to divide,” said Raoul.

Democratic US Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said his offices would help anyone who was improperly arrested. “We can all agree we that must remove dangerous individuals who are here illegally,” Durbin wrote in a post on X. “But the actions being taken by the Trump admin go beyond those goals.”

In addition to Chicago, immigration actions were reported in California, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, according to Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We’re prioritizing criminal aliens,” Homan told CNN on Sunday, but added, “There’s going to be a point where we have to open the aperture to fugitives.”

Arrests reported at homes and a church

Arrests of undocumented immigrants, including those with no criminal record, have been reported across the country.

Jennifer Jimenez, whose cousin was detained by federal agents in Newark, New Jersey, last week, said her cousin was not in the United States to “create any harm” — he just wanted to provide for his family.

Jimenez told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday her cousin David is a “hard-working man” and does not have a criminal record. He has been in the United States for about four years, she said.

Federal agents detained multiple people Thursday during what ICE called “a targeted enforcement operation.” Jimenez described agents coming into the business where her cousin worked and asking for his identification before they took him to a detention center.

The agents “raided” the local business and detained “undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement at the time.

Jimenez said her cousin came to the United States to take care of his family and pay medical bills. His younger sister died of cancer and had a young daughter, whom he was raising, Jimenez said.

Federal agents “don’t know the reason that they’re coming here,” Jimenez said of immigrants. “It’s not for them to create any harm. It’s for them to prosper, to keep their family alive.”

The enforcement action was in response to a tip reporting unauthorized workers at a place of business, a law enforcement source briefed on the investigation in Newark told CNN.

A suburban Chicago woman said her father — a native of Mexico — had been living in the Unites States for nearly 30 years when he was arrested Sunday after agents knocked on his door.

“They would open the door because they thought maybe one of (his children) were in trouble or something happened to us,” Yelitza Marquina told CNN affiliate WLS. “Never did he think they were ICE.”

One undocumented man was taken into custody by ICE while attending church Sunday in Tucker, Georgia, his pastor told CNN.

Luis Ortiz was in the middle of his sermon when he saw the man being escorted out by other congregants. He was told ICE agents did not enter the building but asked for the man by name.

Former acting director of ICE under the Obama administration, John Sandweg, told CNN’s Laura Coates that, under Trump’s new policy, more “collateral arrests” are being made.

“When you go to a home where you’ve identified one of your primary target lives, oftentimes you find they’re not the only undocumented immigrant living in the home. They might have family members who are undocumented,” Sandweg said.

“In the Biden administration or Obama administration, you don’t take those people into custody unless they also pose a threat to public safety,” Sandweg said. “Under the Trump administration, they’ve been very open about arresting everybody in the house. That does drive up the number of arrests.”

Adult migrants have stopped going to work and children are not going to school out of fear they could be arrested at any time, a Chicago-based non-profit assisting immigrants told CNN. The charity asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.

In the Atlanta area, the DeKalb County School District sent a note to school families advising them the district will not voluntarily allow immigration agents into their schools.

“As with any unauthorized visitor, entrance beyond the main office and access to students or their information is prohibited without a court order or exigent circumstances,” wrote Superintendent Devon Horton.

A coalition of Quaker groups filed a lawsuit in Maryland on Monday to stop the Department of Homeland Security from enacting its new policy of allowing immigration enforcement near places of worship.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare as unconstitutional the newly created policy by the Trump administration to conduct immigration enforcement near or at houses of worship, dictated by an individual agent’s “common sense.” The lawsuit says religious exercise is an essential service, and preventing congregants from attending services creates “a substantial burden” on the plaintiff’s own rights.

Nationwide, 1,179 people were arrested Monday and 853 immigration detainers were lodged, ICE said in a post on X. This comes after 956 people were arrested and 554 detainers were lodged Sunday, ICE said in a post on X, marking the highest numbers since the agency started reporting them on the platform.

ICE will continue “enhanced operations” across the Southeast about two to three times a week, according to a source with knowledge of the operations. They will involve the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with the agencies given authority to apprehend immigrants.

ICE is casting a wide net, but its primary target is Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison, according to the source.

Not all communities with large immigrant communities appear to be concerned by the sweeps.

“Most of my constituents are fine. My constituents are here legally,” said US Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Republican who represents a portion of Miami-Dade County, Florida. Trump defeated Kamala Harris in that county, with its large Cuban population, by more than 125,000 votes in 2024.

“That’s what President Trump ran on, and he is complying with his promises,” Giménez told CNN’s Pamela Brown.

Investigation against ‘sanctuary’ cities

Chicago and several other “sanctuary cities” are also the subject of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation announced Monday.

House Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, sent letters to the mayors of Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York and requested documents and information related to those cities’ policies. Sanctuary jurisdiction is a term broadly applied to cities that have policies to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions.

In response to the investigation, a spokesperson for the city of Boston said, “We are proud that Boston is the safest major city in the United States. We have received the letter and are reviewing it.”

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement, “The most helpful thing Congressional Republicans could do right now is fix our broken immigration system. While they work on that, we will focus on running the cities that manage the consequences of their failure to act.”

And a spokesperson for New York Mayor Eric Adams told CNN he “has made clear that New York City is committed to working with our federal partners to fix our broken immigration system and focus on the small number of people who are entering our localities and committing violent crimes. We will review the letter and respond accordingly.”

CNN has reached out to the office of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

ICE agents are “actually very good” at identifying people when they are booked into jail and putting a detainer on them, Sanweg explained.

“But sometimes people get out,” he said. “And then, to be fair – with some of the administration’s rhetoric in a sanctuary city – they are less likely to give ICE agents access to the jails. So that increases the number of targets out on the street … that’s the primary tactic for the targeting piece of this.

Pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the administration’s departure from long-standing policy by allowing federal immigration agents to conduct arrests at churches and schools, Homan said: “There’s no safe haven for public safety.”

“Again, it takes a lot to get approval to go into a school or church. But if there’s a national security threat, we’re going,” he said.

Local authorities in several cities have highlighted their policies of not participating in federal immigration raids since the Trump administration launched its immigration crackdown.

The Chicago Police Department said in a statement to CNN it does not document immigration status, and in accordance with its “Welcoming City Ordinance,” “does not share information with federal immigration authorities.”

In San Jose, California, “we do not have our local police officers engaged in the enforcement actions that are primarily related to somebody’s status or enforcing an immigration law,” Mayor Matt Mahan told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.

And in Sunnyside, a city in central Washington where city manager Mike Gonzalez said the vast majority of residents are Latino, local police and authorities will not participate in federal immigration efforts, he said after several arrests were reported there.

After the arrest of 20 people at a local business near Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Heights city officials said in a statement that they “did not have prior knowledge of, was not involved in, nor did it cooperate or coordinate with federal officials from ICE in a raid,” according to CNN affiliate WOIO.

Alternately, in Nassau County, a suburb of New York on Long Island with a significant migrant community, local law enforcement have said they’re ready and willing to help federal immigration efforts.

“Nassau County Police and Sheriff Departments are fully cooperating with ICE and other federal agencies to round up illegal migrants starting with the worst first,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, told CNN in a statement Monday.

ICE leaders determined to increase arrests

Teams across the country have been given various quotas for the number of so-called “high-profile” immigration sweeps they should conduct each month, one source said, with the goal being to beat the number of administrative arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year.

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations conducted 113,431 administrative arrests in the fiscal year that ended October 2024, according to an agency report. That’s about 310 arrests a day.

Homan denied imposing an arrest quota on ICE officers.

“I don’t have a number. As many as we can arrest and deport,” he told Collins. “The more money we have, the more we can do.”

Whether there is a firm arrest quota or not, Sandweg said he’s concerned the pressure to rack up large arrest numbers could result in heavy-handed tactics.

“What I’m very interested to see is in the next few weeks as these target lists get exhausted — as they just run out of the easy pickings of the people connected to the criminal justice system — what operational tactics are they going to utilize that feed the machinery that the Trump administration has built?” he said.

About 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, the Pew Research Center’s latest estimates indicate.

Federal law enforcement agencies have been told to prioritize deporting a wide swath of criminal suspects under investigation who may be “out of status,” a law enforcement source familiar with the latest operations tells CNN. Someone who is out of status may have entered the United States legally but has violated the terms of their visa or other immigration requirements.

If a suspect under investigation by agencies such as the FBI, ATF or DEA is in the country unlawfully, and an indictment for non-immigration criminal offenses investigated by those agencies is not likely in the near term, the source said, investigators have been told to consider “just getting them out.”

The new posture is notable because crimes investigated by federal law enforcement agencies can take weeks or even several months to prove and prosecute. However, under the new guidance from Trump administration officials, agencies have been told to opt for deportation of undocumented suspects if a criminal indictment does not appear on the horizon.

Prior to taking office, Trump transition officials were asking law enforcement agencies about how many of their investigations involved non-US citizens, the source said.

CNN’s Michelle Krupa, Lauren Mascarenhas, Gustavo Valdés, Zoe Sottile and Karina Tsui contributed to this report.

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