ICE Arrests Nearly 800 Migrants in ‘First-of-Its-Kind’ Operation

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has arrested almost 800 migrants as part of a new collaboration with local law enforcement.

Why It Matters

Since assuming office in January, President Donald Trump has made deporting undocumented immigrants a key priority, vowing to crack down on border security, carrying out mass deportations and ending federal benefits for people entering the country.

Local law enforcement carrying out migrant arrests extends their powers and scope. Some say this will help Trump carry out his pledges, but others have raised concerns about breaking up families via the deportations.

ICE — An aerial view of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Krome Detention Center, on the edge of the Everglades, on April 24, 2025, near Miami.

AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

What To Know

ICE arrested around 780 migrants, including 275 with final removal orders, in a four-day operation which took place in Florida, according to data cited by multiple publications.

An ICE official told the New York Times that Operation Tidal Wave targeted undocumented migrants with final deportation orders and was the first to take place as part of a formal arrangement with state law enforcement, called 287(g).

This arrangement allows state and local agency officials to be deputized and to arrest those in the U.S. illegally. Previously, these powers have been reserved for federal agencies like ICE.

Nearly 230 Florida law enforcement agencies, including city police departments, have signed 287(g) agreements. Of these, 130 are under a task-force model, meaning they can enforce some immigration powers with ICE oversight, including detaining those suspected of being undocumented migrants.

What People Are Saying

The Florida Immigration Coalition said in a statement to Newsweek: “This [operation] is a rush to meet an arbitrary number, but behind those numbers are fathers, mothers, siblings, friends, and neighbors; hardworking members of our communities who pay taxes and contribute to our state.”

Tessa Petit, the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition said the arrests were going to “break up families.”

“And that is not the welcoming state that Florida has been for immigrants for decades,” she added.

Kristi Noem, Department of Homeland Security secretary reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to curbing illegal immigration in a statement Monday.

“President Trump and I have a clear message to those in our country illegally: LEAVE NOW,” she said. “If you do not self-deport, we will hunt you down, arrest you and deport you.”

Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, told ABC News: “I think the main reason why this operation is significant is because it’s the first of its kind. It’s one that not only we’ve been doing what we have, but we have surged all our federal partners together along with Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement [and] Removal Operations, which are all the enforcement arms of ICE, but we’re also using all our 287(g) partners in the state of Florida. We’re using state, local and county law enforcement agencies to assist us in our operations.

“So this is one of the first large-scale missions we’ve done like this ever,” he added. “We brought a ‘whole the government’ approach with cooperative jurisdictions that want to help ICE secure communities in neighborhoods and remove public safety threats from our neighborhoods.”