ICE didn't do much of anything, hasn't really done all that much in the last twenty years or so since they were founded.
That's just not true.
During the Bush II and Obama administrations, ICE conducted SUBSTANTIAL numbers of sweeps, raids, arrests and deportations.
For instance, during the Obama administration there were about 3.1 million 'removals' - that is, people who were arrested and involuntarily removed from the US following formal proceedings. There were also about 2.1 million 'returns' - that is, people who had been detained or arrested and then departed from the US voluntarily (mostly on the US-Mexico border).
The difference between that and what is currently being done is one of targeting and focus.
Obama was labelled by a number of critics (usually leftist or immigrant rights advocates) as the 'Deporter in Chief'. The administration's policy was to prioritise deportations of three groups:
Group 1 were 'National security threats, noncitizens apprehended immediately at the border, gang members, and noncitizens convicted of felonies or aggravated felonies as defined in immigration law.' These comprised about 75-80% of all Obama-era deportations.
Group 2 were noncitizens with criminal or multiple misdemeanour convictions (about 5-10% of deportations)
Group 3 were people who had long-standing deportation orders already in place (about 1-2% of deportations).
However, the Obama administration got a huge (and much-deserved) amount of kick-back about its second term policies around family deportations and deportations of unaccompanied minors. Which made it leery of targeting certain classes of immigrants (like parents or other primary care givers).
The first Trump administration
initially followed a similar playbook. However, in typical Trump administration fashion things didn't go as planned/expected. Despite the ICE budget jumping by 33% arrests actually
declined compared to the Obama administration. Immigration Court appearances marginally declined and then stagnated for the first couple of years and removals of individuals deemed national security threats or criminals actually fell by almost a third as well.
However, the end of the second year of the Trump I administration saw it pivot towards a mass deportation strategy based on 'interior enforcement'. It re-started Clinton/Bush-era policies on raids on workplaces and expanded these to include things like social gatherings. It was also much more likely to detain/arrest individuals without any criminal or misdemeanour records than any previous administration.
The result was a spike in 'returns' and 'removals'. This was accompanied by a rapid expansion of the number of immigration judges - the number went from about 350-375 in 2017 to about 560-580 by the end of 2020 (and up to about 700-750 now).
With the second Trump administration, what ICE is doing is ramping up that end of Trump I administration ethos into a 'blanket' approach. It's not being selective. The strategy appears to be 'everything, everywhere, all at once'.
ICE is not actually prioritising criminals/national security threats (despite all the talk about targeting gangs). As of the end of Jun-2025, only about 25-30% of ICE arrests were of people with criminal convictions.
One of the other things to note is that share of people who are being represented by council has fallen precipitously.
In March, there were about 72,000 cases processed. Of which about 16,700 had some kind of legal representation, or a rate of about 23%. In comparison, the historical rate of cases with representation is about 48%.
The current iteration of the 'Opening Arguments' podcast includes an immigration lawyer who talks about all this stuff at great length. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in US legal goings on, particularly anyone with an eye on immigration, the Supreme Court and the various cases for/against the Trump administration.
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