The Trump administration has intensified its high-profile immigration crackdown in major cities across the United States, launching new operations on Wednesday in New Orleans and Minneapolis aimed at locating, arresting and deporting people living in the country without legal status.
Officials have repeatedly argued that these operations are focused on dangerous offenders — the “worst of the worst.” When rolling out the New Orleans initiative, for example, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) highlighted 10 violent offenders it said had been released from local jails because of the city’s “sanctuary” policies.
Yet government data from other recent and ongoing raids — in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and additional cities — shows that most of those taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have no criminal history.
Instead, as agents work to hit the administration’s new daily target of 3,000 ICE arrests, up from a previous goal of 1,000, noncriminal immigrants are increasingly being detained in public locations. That shift follows a directive issued in May by senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, the chief strategist behind Trump’s immigration policies, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Rather than “develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice,” the Journal reported, Miller encouraged agents to focus on public gathering spots like “Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores.”
Below is an overview of the cities where the Trump administration has deployed these tactics so far — and what is currently happening in each.
New Orleans
December 2025
Louisiana has become the second deep-red state, after Tennessee, to see sweeping immigration raids. But New Orleans itself — like Memphis before it — is led by Democrats. Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, who was born in Mexico, raised flags before the operation began.
“The reports of due process violations and potential abuses in other cities are concerning,” Moreno said in a statement. “I want our community to be aware and informed of the protections available under law.”
Key details remain murky. It is still unclear exactly which federal agencies are involved or how many agents will be deployed in the city. Early reporting indicates that a DHS campaign overseen by the Border Patrol is targeting roughly 5,000 arrests. Residents, anticipating a federal presence for weeks, have been rearranging their daily lives; some employers have advised workers to stay home, while others report employees choosing not to come in because of fear.
Minneapolis
December 2025
In the wake of President Trump’s “xenophobic tirade” on Tuesday about Somali immigrants — he referred to them as “garbage,” among other insults — the administration dispatched roughly 100 ICE officers, agents and other federal personnel to the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. Their goal is to track down and arrest Somalis with final deportation orders. Minnesota is home to the world’s largest Somali diaspora.
“When they come from hell and complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said Tuesday.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, cautioned that “targeting Somali people… means that American citizens will be detained for no reason other than the fact that they look Somali.” Nationwide, about 73% of Somali immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Census Bureau. Many others have lived in the country for decades under a temporary legal status program for migrants from crisis-stricken nations.
Charlotte
November 2025
In November, federal agents poured into Charlotte, where they were seen wearing tactical gear and masks while making arrests in public, spreading fear throughout the city. Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest and one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, has a rapidly expanding Latino population. Senior Border Patrol official Greg Bovino, who previously led raids in Los Angeles and Chicago, is a North Carolina native and played a central role in the operation. Agents soon widened their efforts to Raleigh and other nearby communities.
“There’s a strategy here,” Bovino recently told a podcaster, describing his aggressive street-level tactics. “And that is — self-deportations.”
Local authorities announced that the operation in North Carolina had wrapped up around Nov. 20, but DHS pushed back, saying it had not fully ended. According to an internal DHS document obtained by CBS News, only about one-third of those arrested in Charlotte were categorized as having criminal records.
Chicago
September 2025
Initially directed by Bovino, federal agents in Chicago employed some of their most hardline tactics to date, escalating tensions and provoking violence in the nation’s third-largest city.
Reported actions included deploying chemical agents near a public school, handcuffing a Chicago City Council member at a hospital, shooting and injuring a driver, and “rappelling” from helicopters while using zip ties to detain residents inside apartment buildings.
“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in October. “They need to get out of Chicago if they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they were going to do.”
A federal judge later ruled that government officials, including Bovino, had repeatedly misrepresented their own conduct. “I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” she wrote.
Since that ruling, Bovino has left Chicago and the Border Patrol has sharply scaled back its footprint in the city. In total, more than 3,000 people were arrested in the broader regional operation.
Memphis
September 2025
In Tennessee, where Republican Gov. Bill Lee has framed the initiative as a push to fight crime, federal forces began arriving in late September. Lee also authorized deployment of the National Guard alongside federal agencies.
More than a dozen agencies have taken part, including the F.B.I., the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. So far, more than 2,600 people have been arrested, among them undocumented immigrants. Immigration agents have been spotted across Memphis and surrounding areas.
Last month, a judge issued a temporary order blocking the National Guard from participating in federal operations; the state appealed that ruling on Tuesday.
Portland
June 2025
Protesters have been gathering outside the ICE facility about two miles south of downtown Portland, Oregon, since June to denounce ramped-up immigration raids in the city. After scattered clashes, Portland Police Bureau reports indicated that both the size and intensity of nightly ICE protests dropped off in August and September.
Still, on Sept. 27, Trump ordered his “Secretary of War” — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — to mobilize troops against what he labeled “domestic terrorists” outside the Portland ICE facility, urging the use of full force in a city he likened to a war zone.
The City of Portland and the State of Oregon sued, and a federal judge moved last month to permanently block the deployment of troops there.
Los Angeles
June 2025
Federal immigration raids in Los Angeles began in June 2025, marking one of the earliest and most visible stages of the administration’s broader campaign. Since then, the tactics and legal battles tested in Los Angeles have echoed through New Orleans, Minneapolis, Chicago, Charlotte, Memphis and Portland — shaping the evolving blueprint for immigration enforcement across the country.
