Kristi Noem Says Americans Should Be Prepared to Prove Their Citizenship as ICE Ramps Up Raids

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is pushing back on reports that federal agents have asked people to prove their citizenship as Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations continue in cities across the United States.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Thursday, Jan. 15, Noem was asked why ICE and border agents have seemingly questioned people about their citizenship status — and whether she expects Americans to carry documentation in case they are stopped.

“In every situation, we are doing targeted enforcement,” the former North Dakota governor, 54, said. “If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there and having them validate their identity.”

“That’s what we’ve always done in asking people who they are so that we know who’s in those surroundings,” she added.

Noem said that if agents determine someone may be breaking the law, that person can be detained “until we’ve run that processing.”

The actions of ICE have drawn renewed scrutiny in 2026, nearly a year after President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a controversial mass deportation effort.

In recent weeks, multiple incidents have intensified public attention: On Jan. 3, a Texas detainee died in ICE custody in what a medical examiner is likely to rule a homicide, according to The Washington Post. On Jan. 7, Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good was shot four times by an ICE agent while attempting to drive away from officers and was later pronounced dead. On Jan. 9, a 21-year-old anti-ICE protester was permanently blinded and, according to his aunt, was mocked by agents after being shot at close range by non-lethal ammunition. And on Jan. 14, a Venezuelan man was shot in the leg during a struggle with ICE officers.

Videos showing agents clashing with protesters, crashing into vehicles, and approaching homes in cities including Minneapolis have circulated widely on social media. Trump has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota to suppress anti-ICE protests with military force.

Data obtained by University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project showed that nearly 75,000 people arrested by ICE during Trump’s first nine months in office had no criminal record.

The data — compiled by an internal ICE office and released publicly through a lawsuit filed against the agency — also indicated that nearly one-third of those arrested in that period had no criminal record. For those who had prior convictions, the dataset does not distinguish between minor offenses and violent crimes.

Public reporting on how often U.S. citizens have been caught up in immigration enforcement remains incomplete. Still, ProPublica identified more than 170 cases in which U.S. citizens were detained during raids and protests in the first nine months of Trump’s second presidency.

Podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris in the final stretch of the 2024 election, has emerged as one of the most high-profile critics of the administration’s immigration crackdown.

On the Jan. 13 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan said “most people” believe law enforcement is necessary and that criminals should be arrested — but argued that many of those same people also believe ICE is “operating illegally.”

“Those same people that believe that might also believe that once someone is here, they should be able to stay in this country and ICE is operating illegally and we shouldn’t have militarized groups of people roaming the streets just showing up with masks on, snatching people up, some of them U.S. citizens, and shipping them to countries they didn’t even come from,” he said.

Rogan — whose show has routinely held the No. 1 spot on the Spotify podcast charts and has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube — also compared agents demanding papers from residents to tactics used by the “Gestapo,” the political police under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, known for surveillance, home searches, interrogation, and, at times, torture against those viewed as enemies.

“I can also see the point of view of the people that say, ‘Yeah, but you don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around snatching people up, many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,’ ” Rogan, 58, said. “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”