The Department of Homeland Security says ICE has launched a sanctuary city surge, sending more immigration agents into 11 states and Washington, D.C. The agency announced the operation Saturday in a post on X, calling it a “nationwide public safety surge.”
Here is every place DHS named: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Washington, D.C. Those states are home to some of the largest cities in the country, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis.
A sanctuary city or state is a place with local rules that limit how much police and jails cooperate with federal immigration agents. Most often, local jails will not hold someone past their release date just because ICE asks them to. That request is called a detainer, and it lets ICE take a person into custody straight from jail. When local officials refuse, ICE has said it is forced to go find people out in the community instead, at homes, at work and on the street.
DHS says the sanctuary city surge is aimed at what it calls “criminal illegal aliens” who were “released from jails by sanctuary politicians.” In the same statement, the agency said its officers “will continue to arrest any and all illegal aliens that come into our path.” The second line reaches much further than the first. Under that wording, anyone in the country without legal status who crosses paths with agents can be arrested, whether or not they have a criminal record.
DHS has released no numbers alongside the announcement. The agency has not said how many officers are being sent, which cities they will hit first or when the operation ends. For people living in the 12 places on the list, that means the surge could show up anywhere in their state with no warning.
The announcement came during a violent stretch for immigration enforcement. Days earlier in Austin, Texas, federal officials shot Wilber Rafael Garcas Perez, a Venezuelan man, in his car while he was delivering food for DoorDash. He was taken to a hospital and has been held in ICE custody since, with a bullet still lodged in his back. Texas is not on the DHS sanctuary list.
The week before that, a U.S. citizen was left bloodied and hurt on the side of the road in a Chicago suburb after immigration agents mistook him for a fugitive, according to local police and a resident who stopped to help him. Illinois is on the list, and the Chicago area has already been a main target of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
DHS is presenting the sanctuary city surge as a response to threats against its officers. In a statement released September 24, the department called on sanctuary politicians to stop what it described as hateful and violent rhetoric against ICE. DHS claims assaults on ICE officers have risen more than 1,600% compared with the first year and a half of the Biden administration.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has gone after sanctuary jurisdictions. Its earlier attempts to cut federal funding to these cities were blocked in court, and judges have upheld the legality of their policies. A surge of agents is a different approach. The funding fights were about punishing local governments, while this operation puts federal officers directly into communities whose leaders have refused to help them.
