U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement disproportionately targets Latino people in ways that warrant structural reform

What's this about?

People disagree about whether ICE, the U.S. agency that checks and removes some people, treats Latino groups unfairly.

The main question asks if ICE rules cause more harm to Latino people and need big system changes.

What supporters say

• Wide ICE raids can split families, hurt local groups, and cause fear and deep stress.
• We are not sure that wide ICE action makes people safer or cuts crime.
• Treating a crime-linked label as part of being an immigrant can build unfair rules into the system.
• ICE systems seem to place a bigger burden on Latino and immigrant groups.

What critics say

• Unequal results alone do not prove that ICE staff chose people because they were Latino.
• ICE says it acts based on legal status and its set goals, not a person’s race.

How to read this

The number of points on each side does not show who is right; the strength of the proof matters more.

The bottom line

The proof most strongly shows unequal harm to Latino groups and serious harm to families and health.

That supports big changes to ICE rules, but we are less sure that staff purposely target people for being Latino.

The evidence supports the claim that ICE enforcement places a disproportionate burden on Latino communities and that this burden warrants structural reform. But it supports that conclusion more strongly as a finding about unequal effects and serious harms than as proof that officers deliberately target people because they are Latino.

The case for

ICE-linked enforcement systems appear to expose Latino and immigrant communities to unequal burdens. Administrative analysis of the Secure Communities program has found demographic disparities and raised due-process concerns, supporting scrutiny of how the system works in practice (see Figure 1). These findings do not prove that officers selected people because they were Latino. They do, however, show why formal statements about race-neutral policy are not enough to settle the question of unequal treatment. 1

The strongest evidence concerns the consequences of broad enforcement. Peer-reviewed research links restrictive immigration policies and enforcement-heavy environments to stress, poorer health, and reduced access to medical care among immigrant and Latino communities. Research on large worksite raids has also documented family separation, disruption and community trauma. A county-level study found an association between Latino populations, immigration enforcement and reports of child maltreatment, although its design cannot show that enforcement directly caused individual cases (see Figure 3). 2

The public-safety case for wide-ranging enforcement is also uncertain. A peer-reviewed study of cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities challenges the assumption that stronger immigration enforcement consistently reduces crime. Analysis of ICE’s Criminal Alien Program argues that enforcement can reach beyond people who pose serious public-safety threats, while creating collateral damage for families and communities (see Figure 2). 3

That record provides a basis for narrower enforcement priorities, stronger due-process protections, independent oversight and better demographic data. Legal scholarship adds a broader concern: criminal-law tools have expanded within immigration enforcement, helping normalize detention, removal and reduced procedural protections. This is mainly a legal and institutional argument, not direct statistical proof of Latino targeting, but it supports examining how the system is designed rather than focusing only on individual misconduct. 4

The case against

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security say enforcement is based on immigration-law violations, criminal conduct, national security and agency priorities—not Latino identity. Those statements are relevant to the agencies’ formal policies, but they cannot by themselves show how rules operate in practice or whether their effects are unequal. 5

Nor do disparate outcomes automatically prove discriminatory targeting. Latino people make up a large share of the unauthorized and foreign-born populations, so a high Latino share among those affected may partly reflect the population most exposed to immigration enforcement. Available data may also fail to distinguish reliably among race, ethnicity, citizenship, legal status and the people actually encountered by authorities. 6

The existing research has an important gap: it lacks a strong, individual-level test separating ethnic targeting from patterns produced by immigration status, geography, referral practices or the makeup of the enforcement population. Several findings come from administrative data, working papers, institutional statements or studies with limited methodological detail. County-level and other broad studies can identify patterns and harms, but generally cannot show that a particular ICE officer acted because someone was Latino.

The bottom line

The evidence favors structural reform, with high confidence in the narrower conclusion that ICE-related enforcement produces serious and concentrated harms for Latino communities. It also suggests that broad enforcement has uncertain public-safety benefits, strengthening the case for narrower priorities, safeguards and oversight.

The evidence is considerably weaker on the separate claim of deliberate ethnic targeting. Official policy says race is not the basis for enforcement, and current data cannot fully rule out explanations involving immigration status, population composition or institutional design. In short, the record supports reform because of predictable unequal effects, due-process concerns and documented family and community harms, even though it does not prove that every enforcement action—or the system as a whole—was intentionally aimed at Latino people.