ICE Conducts Raids Across Texas, U.S.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted “enhanced targeted operations” to detain undocumented migrants across Texas this weekend, following through on President Donald Trump’s campaign pledges and recent comments from his administration.

ICE agents partnered with other federal law enforcement officials, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “to enforce U.S. immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities,” according to the language of several ICE press releases posted in Austin, the Rio Grande Valley and North Texas.  

This weekend’s raids led to the arrests of 84 individuals in North Texas, including in Dallas, Fort Worth, Irvington, and Arlington, KERA reported on Sunday. ICE officials told KERA that those operations were underway in Oklahoma, too.

Federal officials also conducted sweeps of Austin over the weekend, KXAN reported, prompting protests at the Texas Capitol on Sunday. Similar operations occurred in the Rio Grande Valley over the weekend, ValleyCentral reported, though neither organization could confirm how many people had been arrested or detained.

Other major cities across the country confirmed federal detainment actions, including Houston, San Antonio, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Buffalo, KXAN found.

Though ICE can set its own schedule for enforcing immigration policy — in 2024, ICE’s San Antonio office conducted more than 25,000 “removals” — the raids come about a week after Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, announced upcoming raids in major U.S. cities on Fox News.

Homan also told ABC News on Sunday that the raids would target migrants who pose public safety or national security threats, but the administration is only “in the beginning stages” of its mass deportation plans. Its ultimate vision is for every undocumented migrant to worry about deportation, and Homan said he expects arrests and detainments to increase across the country as that project gets underway.

“So if you’re in the country illegally, you got a problem,” he said.