In the days immediately before and after U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, conversations about when and where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids may occur spread widely online.
Snopes readers asked us whether ICE raids
Media outlets, including CNN (archived), NPR (archived) and The Associated Press (archived), also began reporting that Trump had reversed a policy preventing immigration and Border Patrol officials from making arrests in and near schools and churches.
It's true that Trump promised mass arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, as previously reported by Snopes. Federal officials have said ICE raids were underway since Inauguration day, although the agency's activity did not appear to have increased dramatically as of this writing.
It's also true that the Trump administration authorized immigration arrests in previously protected areas, including churches, schools and hospitals. However, ICE had not released information about specific cities or dates where raids may happen or are happening.
Thus, most information circulating about locations of purported raids in the days immediately after Trump's inauguration was either speculation or anecdotal, which means Snopes cannot verify it as of this writing. Snopes reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border and Customs Protection and the Department of Homeland Security for more information, and we'll update the story if we receive responses.
Here's everything we know so far about recent and potential immigration raids during the early days of Trump's second administration:
More Than 300 Arrested Day After Trump's Inauguration
Homan, Trump's border czar and former ICE director, told Fox News anchor John Roberts that ICE began making arrests on Jan. 21, 2025, the day after Trump's inauguration, to make good on Trump's promise to begin the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history" on Day 1.
Roberts: Tom, we were expecting based on your initial schedule that today, roundups of criminal illegal aliens and the process of deporting them would begin. That seems to have been put on hold for a little while. When can we expect that to happen, where will it begin?
Homan: It's started.
Roberts: It's started?
Homan: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement teams are out there as of today. We gave them direction to prioritize public safety threats that we're looking for. We're working up the target list. There was some discussion about Chicago because the specific operational plan was released, so we had to look at and reevaluate — does this raise officer safety concerns? — and it does, but we've addressed that and teams are out there today.
Homan said in another Fox News interview with Jesse Watters that immigration raids would happen across the country.
Watters: Am I blowing your cover when I announce that there's going to be a big raid in Chicago on Tuesday? Or do you want people to know? Maybe they can self-deport.
Homan: There's going to be a big raid all across the country. Chicago is just one of many places. We've got 24 field offices across the country. On Tuesday, you're going to expect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is finally going to go out and do its job. We're going to take the handcuffs off of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and let them go arrest criminal aliens. That's what's going to happen.
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Chicago was purportedly the first city Trump's administration planned to target for widespread immigration raids, although Homan later said on Fox News that those plans had to be reviewed due to "a leak," The Washington Post reported.
However, according to news reports from reputable Chicago news outlets, including NPR affiliate WBEZ, immigration advocates saw no ICE activity on Jan. 21. Snopes reached out to Chicago's Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, activist groups and state officials for more information and will update the story if we receive responses.
Homan said in a Jan. 22 interview on Fox News that ICE arrested "over 308 serious criminals" the day before, and the official White House account on Instagram reposted a video of Homan saying this. Some news articles that Snopes has not yet been able to independently verify said ICE officials reported 460 arrests in a 33-hour period spanning from Jan. 21 to 22, with arrests happening in cities across the country, including Baltimore; Buffalo, New York; Salt Lake City; and San Francisco. One article referred to an ICE "press release" as its source. As of this writing, the agency has not published any news releases online in the days after Trump's presidency; Snopes will update this story if we receive the reported release or ICE publishes it online.
But those numbers are not much different from ICE enforcement under Biden. In January 2024, for example, according to the agency's statistics dashboard, it
Sanctuary Cities and 'Collateral Arrests'
In a CNN interview with anchor Dana Bash, Homan said ICE officials would prioritize arresting "public safety threats," but he added that immigrants in the country illegally who haven't committed felonies can be arrested in the process of these operations, especially in so-called sanctuary cities, or areas that prevent or limit local officials from coordinating or cooperating with federal immigration enforcement (emphasis ours):
Bash: And so what is happening as we speak is limited to those with criminal records?
Homan: That's the target of this operation. But like I said many times, in places like sanctuary cities, where we can't arrest the bad person in the jail. We'd like to have access to the jail to arrest the criminal alien in the safety and security of the county jail, which is safer for the community, safer for the officers, safer for the alien. But when you release a public safety threat out of a sanctuary jail and won't give us access to them, that means we gotta go to the neighborhood to find them. We will find him. But when we find him, he may be with others. Others that don't have a criminal conviction but are in the country illegally, they will be arrested too. This is the difference between the last administration and this administration. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going to enforce the immigration law. There's nothing in the INA, the Immigration Nationality Act, that says you got to be convicted of a serious crime in order to be removed from this country. There's going to be more collateral arrests in sanctuary cities because they forced us to go into the community and find the guy we're looking for.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, in a Jan. 21 internal memo reported on by reputable news outlets such as The Associated Press, called for Justice Department attorneys to investigate and potentially prosecute state and local officials who refuse to enforce the Trump administration's immigration policies. The memo also directed the Justice Department to identify state and local laws that are "inconsistent" with Trump's immigration policies and "take legal action" to challenge those laws. That will likely include sanctuary cities and their local officials. The full memo, the authenticity of which Snopes has not independently confirmed, is available online.
Snopes reached out to the Justice Department to confirm the memo's authenticity and will update the story if we hear back.
Raids Can Now Happen in Schools, Churches and Hospitals
On Jan. 20, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman rescinded guidelines that "thwart law enforcement in or near so-called 'sensitive' areas," telling officials to use "common sense." That's according to a Department of Homeland Security news release, which said "criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest."
The release said Huffman's directive rescinded "the Biden Administration's guidelines." ICE first announced a policy ensuring that "enforcement actions do not occur at nor are focused on sensitive locations such as schools and churches" in 2011 (a decade before Biden became president), according to an agency policy memo.
However, in 2021 under the Biden administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas released a new policy expanding the list of sensitive locations to include "places where children gather, disaster or emergency relief sites, and social services establishments."
The January 2025 directive from Trump's administration rescinded all guidance preventing ICE from arresting people in "sensitive areas," meaning that both the 2011 policy and the Biden policy are no longer in effect.
Snopes could not find news reports from reputable sources suggesting that ICE was already arresting people in previously protected areas as of this writing. Some schools, such as Bridgeport Public Schools in Connecticut, have released guidelines defying this new policy.
