U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.
Immigration reduction refers to a government and social policy in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal migration, and reductions in non-immigrant temporary work visas. Some advocate tightening the requirements for legal immigration requirements to reduce numbers or move the proportions of legal immigrants away from those on family reunification programs to skills-based criteria.
Reforming the immigration policy of the United States is a subject of political discourse and contention. Immigration has played an essential part in American history, as except for the Native Americans, everyone in the United States is descended from people who migrated to the United States. Some claim that the United States maintains the world's most liberal immigration policy.
Illegal immigration, or unauthorized immigration, occurs when foreign nationals, known as aliens, violate US immigration laws by entering the United States unlawfully, or by lawfully entering but then remaining after the expiration of their visas, parole or temporary protected status.
A sanctuary city is a municipality that limits or denies its cooperation with the national government in enforcing immigration law.
The United States government holds tens of thousands of immigrants in detention under the control of Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a United States immigration policy that allows some individuals who, on June 15, 2012, were physically present in the United States with no lawful immigration status after having entered the country as children at least five years earlier, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for an employment authorization document.
Deportation and removal from the United States occurs when the U.S. government orders a person to leave the country. In fiscal year 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted 315,943 removals. Criteria for deportations are set out in 8 U.S.C. § 1227.
On July 1, 2015, 32-year-old Kathryn "Kate" Steinle was shot and killed while walking with her father and a friend along Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. She was hit in the back by a single bullet. The man who fired the gun, José Inez García Zárate, said he had found it moments before, wrapped in cloth beneath a bench on which he was sitting, and that when he picked it up the weapon went off. The shot ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier and struck the victim, who was about 90 feet (27m) away. Steinle died two hours later in a hospital as a result of her injuries.
A sanctuary campus is any college or university, typically in North America and Western Europe, that adopts policies to protect members of the campus community who are undocumented immigrants. The term is modeled after "sanctuary city", a status that has been adopted by over 30 municipalities. Proposed policies on sanctuary campuses include:
Immigration policy, including illegal immigration to the United States, was a signature issue of President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and his proposed reforms and remarks about this issue generated much publicity. Trump has repeatedly said that illegal immigrants are criminals.
Executive Order 13768 titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on January 25, 2017. The order stated that "sanctuary jurisdictions" including sanctuary cities that refused to comply with immigration enforcement measures would not be "eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes" by the U.S. Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security.
As of October 1, 2023, 19 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico issue driver's licenses or permits to some or all of the population residing without inspection in the United States. State laws permitting this are on the books in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
Abolish ICE is a political movement that seeks the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The movement gained mainstream traction in June 2018 following controversy of the Trump administration family separation policy. The movement proposes that ICE's responsibilities be subsumed by other existing immigration agencies, as was the case before its creation. Discussions are particularly focused on the enforcement wing of ICE.
Ronil Singh was a Fijian-born American police officer who was shot and killed on the morning of December 26, 2018, in Newman, California, by a driver he had pulled over on suspicion of driving while drunk. Paulo Mendoza, a 31-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant, was arrested three days later. Prior to his arrest for the murder of Singh, Mendoza was found guilty of multiple offenses.
The issue of crimes committed by illegal immigrants to the United States is a topic that is often asserted by more conservative politicians and media outlets when discussing immigration policy in the United States.
The state of Texas has a long history of immigration and immigration policy. The region that is now Texas was originally home to several Native American tribes. The first European immigrants arrived in the 1600s when the land was colonized by the French and the Spanish. Financial incentives created by the Mexican government brought many immigrants to Mexican Texas in the 1820s, mostly from slaveholding areas in the southern United States. This continued as significant illegal immigration to Mexico after 1830, when American migrants were banned.
The immigration policy Joe Biden initially focused on reversing many of the immigration policies of the previous Trump administration, before implementing stricter enforcement mechanisms later in his term.
Ed Gonzalez is an American law enforcement officer and has served as the 30th sheriff of Harris County, Texas, since January 2017. Gonzalez was the nominee for director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until he withdrew the nomination in June 2022.
The deportation of illegal immigrants in the second presidency of Donald Trump began in January 2025, following Trump's inauguration. On January 23, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began to carry out raids on sanctuary cities, with hundreds of immigrants detained and deported. Trump had previously discussed mass deportations in his presidential campaigns and first presidency.
