U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE

ICE was created on March 1, 2003, by combining the investigative and detention arms of the Immigration and Naturalization Service with the investigators of the Customs Service. Where Customs and Border Protection works at the border and the ports, ICE works inside the country. Its two main parts reflect its double ancestry. Enforcement and Removal Operations locates, arrests, detains, and deports noncitizens who are removable under immigration law. Homeland Security Investigations, its criminal investigative arm, pursues human smuggling and trafficking, drug and weapons smuggling, child exploitation, export violations, and financial crime.

Immigration enforcement is largely civil, not criminal. Being in the country without authorization is a civil violation, and removal is decided by immigration judges in the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review rather than by ICE, which acts as the prosecuting party through its Office of the Principal Legal Advisor. ICE holds people in custody while their cases proceed or until they are removed, using a network of detention centers that are mostly run by private contractors and county jails under agreement. Through the 287(g) program it deputizes state and local officers to perform some immigration functions.

The agency's scale has swung with policy. It conducted about 400,000 removals a year at the peak of the Obama administration, fewer in the years that followed, and grew sharply in 2025, when the administration made mass deportation a central goal. The 2025 budget law provided roughly 75 billion dollars over four years for ICE, including about 45 billion for detention and funding to hire 10,000 additional officers, making it the best-funded federal law enforcement agency. The detained population rose from about 40,000 to more than 60,000 during 2025. Its Director is appointed by the President and requires Senate confirmation, though the post has frequently been filled by acting officials.

Few agencies are as polarizing. Supporters argue that ICE enforces laws Congress passed, that previous administrations let millions remain without legal status, and that removal of people with criminal records protects public safety. Critics argue that expanded arrests at courthouses, workplaces, and in neighborhoods sweep in long-settled residents with no criminal history, that detention conditions and deaths in custody show inadequate oversight, and that masked officers and rapid removals have tested due process. Courts have ruled against the agency on some of these practices and upheld others, and the litigation is ongoing.