Is it legal to record ICE agents?
In the wake of the fatal shooting of a woman in Minnesota, people are wondering if it’s legal to record ICE interactions.
Federal officials say Americans can expect even more aggressive immigration enforcement in the coming months, including more than 10,000 new ICE agents taking to the streets armed with personal data collected by private contractors.
On a Jan. 7 Fox News broadcast, Vice President J.D. Vance said ICE would be going “door-to-door” in the coming months as officials carry out President Donald Trump’s plan for the largest mass deportation in history. Federal officials say they now have about 22,000 employees and agents, up from 10,000 a year ago.
White House officials said 2.5 million people in the U.S. illegally have already been deported or left under pressure, and many more have promised to leave the country in some form, without providing specific details. Vance’s comments were aired hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis shot and killed a woman inside her car during a chaotic confrontation.
White House officials accused Democrats of encouraging illegal immigration to change the country’s voting patterns.
Vance said more aggressive enforcement that began in 2025 will be stepped up this year. “For all the massive investments we’ve made in border security, we’ve actually just removed 2.5 million illegal aliens without doing any of the really major work that we’ve been doing,” Vance said.
“I think the number of deportations will increase as more people work for ICE online and go door-to-door to make sure that if they’re in the country illegally, they leave this country and if they want to come back, they apply through the proper channels,” he said.
The administration is planning more actions
A new, more aggressive movement is underway.
- In November, federal authorities announced plans to hire thousands of civilian “skip tracers” to verify the home and work addresses of up to 1.5 million people in the United States, both online and in person. Contractors are given 50,000 names at a time and are expected to provide photos of their homes and workplaces, according to federal contracting data. They would also be required to collect utility bills, court records, and employment verification information without telling anyone why they were collected.
- Immigration authorities are considering purchasing large warehouses and converting them into detention and processing “megacenters.” Buying the type of warehouses often used by Amazon and other online retailers could exempt federal authorities from many local zoning restrictions and oversight rules governing private and state-run prisons and jails. ICE detention teams have been hampered in Democratic-run cities and states where local jails are not helping to house immigrants, and the addition of new capacity could allow for even larger operations in those areas.
- A Virginia-based company is building a 5,000-bed temporary migrant detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, near the southern border under a $232 million contract, according to the Pentagon. Federal officials have said they hope to add at least 60,000 beds to the roughly 41,000 that were available at this time last year.
- Last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, provides $170 billion in immigration and border funding, all of which must be spent within about four years. This funding includes pay and benefits for 10,000 new ICE officers and 3,000 new Border Patrol officers. (It is unclear whether these jobs will be added to the 12,000 already added.)
Opinions are divided by party
When Trump won the popular vote and took office, the number of people living here illegally was estimated at between 10 million and 16.8 million.
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that President Trump largely followed during his second term, specifically calls for placing ICE deportation officers “everywhere” in the country to enforce immigration laws, not just along the border.
“The patriotic men and women at (ICE) are doing God’s work to protect this country,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said on social media on January 5.
But many Americans believe the crackdown has already gone too far.
In an October Pew Research Center survey, 53% of Americans said the Trump administration is doing “too much” when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, up from 44% in March. Opinions are sharply divided by party, with 86% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters saying the administration has gone too far, compared to just 20% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other critics of President Trump’s enforcement efforts have likened ICE’s tactics to those used by Hitler’s Gestapo and said immigration agents routinely trample on the rights and norms Americans are accustomed to as they search terrorized communities.
Although President Trump has promised to go after the “worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants, nearly 75% of the roughly 60,000 people in immigration detention had no convictions as of November, according to an analysis of ICE statistics by the Transactions Records Access Clearinghouse.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the Republican-controlled House Homeland Security Committee, called on Noem to testify before Congress on both the Minneapolis shooting and overall immigration strategy in a statement on January 8.
“The Trump administration’s uncontrollable and unconstitutional invasion of our communities must be stopped before another American is injured or killed at the hands of our own government,” the Mississippi Democratic Party said in a statement. “Republicans who continue to sit idly by as the Trump administration violates our communities and harms Americans are as responsible as President Trump himself for harming our great country.”
