The Trump administration reversed previous policy and gave ICE permission to raid schools, hospitals and places of worship.

"[27] Trump proposed a "Deportation Force" to carry out this plan, modeled after the 1950s-era "Operation Wetback" program during the Dwight Eisenhower administration that ended following a congressional investigation.

He reiterated that "anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation", with priority given to those who have committed significant crimes and those who have overstayed visas.

[36] The New York Times reported that Trump planned "an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration", including "preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled", and that it "amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history".

Trump's plans are expected to encounter significant Supreme Court challenges, and engender social and economic toil, especially within the housing, agriculture, and service sectors.

Following arrest, Stephen Miller has stated that illegal immigrants would be taken to "large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas", to be held in internment camps prior to deportation.

[22][47] Trump's campaign has stated his intention to expel DACA recipients after his previous attempt failed in 2020 by a 5–4 vote in the Supreme Court in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California.

[49] The former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump from January 2017 to June 2018, Tom Homan, said that he would "run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen" in 2025.

[56] On January 19, 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. were potential targets.

[57][58] The Republican governors of 26 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming) "remain fully committed to supporting the Trump Administration's efforts to deport dangerous criminals".

[59][60] On January 22, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the administration was rolling back an Obama-era directive that had protected illegal immigrants in sensitive areas such as hospitals, places of worship, courtrooms, funerals, weddings and schools.

[61] On January 23, high-profile ICE raids occurred in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Miami, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., detaining 538 illegal immigrants.

The mayor of Newark claimed that ICE raided a local establishment and detained illegal immigrants as well as citizens, including a veteran, without a warrant.

"[65] In the early morning of January 28, 2025, United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem joined multiple federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, to lead a raid on illegal immigrants in New York City.

Her department posted a video of the raid on X that showed an apparent arrest, later confirming the suspect was in custody on kidnapping, assault, and burglary charges with an outstanding warrant in Colorado.

[66] The Guardian reported on February 6, 2025 that thousands of ICE press releases from months or years past had their "updated on" dates changed to appear current so they would appear at the top of Google search results.

[73] Shortly after Trump took office in January 2025, rumors of mass deportations and fears of increased ICE raids impacted the agriculture sector with massive drops in field workers who showed up for work the day after the inauguration.

[17][76][77][78] Adam Tooze said that the planned deportations would cause "a series of rolling shocks to a large part of the U.S. economy" and would also affect people outside those sectors by raising prices.

In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett was arrested for impersonating an ICE officer and sexually assaulting a woman threatening to deport her if she did not comply.

State Senator Theresa Hatathlie, who represents Arizona's 6th legislative district, joined the committee meeting and shared her report in the Navajo language.

Hatathlie reported to the Council that she received a call about a case involving eight Navajo citizens who were detained for hours with no cell phones or ability to contact their families or tribes.

After a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship, the United States Department of Justice, in defense of the constitutionality of the executive order, argued in court that Native Americans did not have birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment because they were not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States based on the 1884 Supreme Court case Elk v. Wilkins, so neither should the children of illegal immigrants or temporary visitors.

The executive director of Raise the Floor Alliance, Sophia Zaman, claimed the motives of the raids were retaliatory by the Trump administration against the cities policies.

[88] On February 11, 2025, a coalition of more than two dozen Christian and Jewish denominations sued the Department of Homeland Security et al. over its decision to allow ICE agents to raid houses of worship to make arrests.