Concerns about racial profiling increase as ICE mistakenly targets US citizens

Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have increased since Donald Trump took office on the promise of implementing mass deportations.

The Trump Administration said it would prioritize immigrants with criminal records in the first weeks of their deportation ramp-up. However, there is no broad data to back that claim.

Homeland Security officials told the New York Times that they would not provide data about the percentage of deportees with criminal records but would only post photos of specific cases on X.

The widespread raids have raised fears that ICE is targeting more people than those with criminal records or is even detaining or questioning American citizens through racial profiling.

Local New York outlet Pix describes one case in a Newark, New Jersey, seafood store raid. ICE agents mistakenly detained and questioned an American citizen.

He was a military vet. According to NBC News, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said he "suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned."

ICE officials told the news channel that they sometimes encounter American citizens during fieldwork and ask them for documents to "establish their identities."

However, the store owner told Pix the agents did not question everyone in the establishment. "It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people, not every kind," he said.

He explained that the veteran, his warehouse manager, is Puerto Rican. "They did not ask me for documentation for my American workers, Portuguese workers, or white workers," he said.

Rosanna Eugenio, legal director at the New York Immigration Coalition, told NBC News that issuing massive raids with no clear subject criteria increases racial profiling.

"How do you tell that someone does not have legal status in this country or is in the process of seeking legal status? You can't tell that by looking at someone," Ms. Eugenio added.

The broad nature of the raids could also lead to a bias in location choosing, as two Puerto Rican business owners denounced the local Philadelphia media.

6abc Philadelphia reported that ICE agents tried to enter a Puerto Rican restaurant without a warrant. "They came here, and they thought we were undocumented," one of the owners said in a video collected by the station.

Telemundo, a Spanish channel, reported a similar situation in which a Puerto Rican family was targeted by ICE agents while speaking Spanish in a grocery store.

Hispanics are not the only ones suffering from the apparent racial profiling. According to NBC News, Navajo Nation citizens denounced they were targeted in ICE operations.

The problem was wide enough so that Navajo President Buu Nygren told the residents to always carry documentation in a local radio station program, NBC reported.

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