Important Stuff to Know About: Building the Ice Gulag – Part 2, Apprehensions

This is the second in the series of four articles that examines the way in which ICE has created a vertically integrated structure that relies on a massive multi-year appropriation from Congress, its newly recruited paramilitary detention force, Roberts Court Shadow Docket decisions, and the ability to operate without fear of serious legal consequences to apprehend, detain, and remove thousands of undocumented individuals currently residing in the United States.

Part II: The new legal paradigm that allows mass apprehension of non-citizens, many of whom have lived in the United States for decades, have deep roots in their communities, and have no criminal records.

It is widely reported that Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Miller set detention quotas for ICE of 3,000 people per day or over a million people per year. To meet the goal, has taken several steps to expand the target pool of individuals that its paramilitary detention force, in cooperation with Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), can apprehend. Apprehension is the first step in the vertical integration that also includes open-ended detention and removal to a third country.

During ICE’s initial mass detention mission in Los Angeles in early 2025, numerous US citizens and those in the country legally were rounded up by the ICE paramilitary detention force and CBP. This pattern has repeated itself in Chicago and Minneapolis. A number of US citizens, after being arrested, zip-tied, beaten, and detained during the ICE roundups, filed suit and obtained a temporary injunction preventing ICE from continuing its indiscriminate apprehensions and detentions that targeted brown people who were at bus stops, car washes, or doing lawn and garden work. The unsigned Supreme Court Shadow Docket decision (Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo) overturned the injunction. Unusually, Justice Kavanaugh took the opportunity to explain that ICE detentions based on racial or ethnic identity were not a problem if combined with other factors such as working at a low-paying job or speaking accented or no English. In Kavanaugh’s Shadow Docket world, US citizens would only be briefly detained until they could prove their status, and all would be treated humanely. In the real world, which is described in detail in a forceful dissent by Justice Sotomayor, ICE has made aggressive use of such “Kavanaugh Stops” whenever and wherever deployed in the United States, which has resulted in apprehension of both undocumented persons and US citizens. Evidence of aggressive ICE behavior in support of its aggressive apprehension operations, including killing two American citizens, abounds.

Of greater concern is ICE’s assertion of authority to use forcible warrantless entries into private residences to apprehend undocumented individuals. In May 2025, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons informed a limited number of DHS officers that a new ICE legal determination now authorized forcible warrantless entry into the homes of aliens who are subject to a final administrative order of deportation issued by an immigration judge. This secret legal opinion is the subject of a whistleblower complaint, but its implementation in Minneapolis has resulted in countless videos of masked and heavily armed unidentified agents smashing doors and entering residences with weapons drawn. Such warrantless break-ins are being challenged in federal courts and have not yet been authorized by the Roberts Court.

When paired with its increasing use of AI and big tech fueled data bases that provide real time locational information, together with increased use of facial recognition technology directed at apprehension targets as well as US citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, ICE now has the ability and the purported legal authority to enter any residence in the United States and apprehend anyone that it believes to be an undocumented individual.

DHS has taken additional steps to increase the pool of individuals subject to apprehension: a ban on refugee applications; a ban on the processing of asylum requests for everyone except White South Africans; a review of all requests for asylum for individuals who entered the country after January 20, 2021; and a drastic reduction in the number of countries covered by Temporary Protective Status, though the TPS actions are being challenged in federal court. The intent certainly appears to be the removal of as many Brown and Black people as possible from the United States. The push to end birthright citizenship strikes at the right of children of undocumented individuals to be considered citizens of the United States.

As the number of ICE’s paramilitary detention force increases, and ICE continues its aggressive use of AI to locate undocumented individuals, millions of noncitizens in every corner of the United States are at risk of apprehension and indeterminate detention. While Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis have borne the brunt of ICE’s paramilitary deployments, no region of the country has been immune. A massive ICE raid on a small town in Idaho that resulted in the detention of several hundred US citizens is now the subject of a lawsuit.

While DHS continues to insist that it is only arresting the “worst of the worst”, otherwise law-abiding individuals continue to be apprehended, to include the spouse of a US citizen who is a vocal MAGA adherent. Apprehensions now regularly occur during interviews for green cards; failure to attend an interview can also be a basis for apprehension. ICE now regularly apprehends students and parents at schools and outside of churches. ICE actions directed at European tourists, to include grandmothers, have been widely publicized. While DHS continues to insist that its actions are directed at “the worst of the worst”, an unfortunate echo of the Bush administration’s statements regarding the initial detainees at Guantanamo, the fear of apprehension has led a number of European countries to issue travel warnings for travel to the United States ahead of the World Cup.

As the pool of apprehension targets and ICE’s aggressiveness in apprehending as many undocumented individuals as possible continue to increase, ICE and DOJ have moved to restrict the ability of these individuals, the vast majority of whom do not have criminal records, to obtain temporary release.

Next: Unbounded Detention

James Petrila spent over thirty years as a lawyer in the Intelligence Community, working at the National Security Agency and, for most of his career, at the Central Intelligence Agency. He has taught courses on counterterrorism law and legal issues at the CIA at the George Washington University School of Law. He is currently a senior advisor to the Institute for the Study of States of Exception and is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.