Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is going all-in to defend immigration officers who've detained U.S. citizens, even as the number of incidents continues to rise.
Why it matters: The government has blamed media "fear-mongering" for the negative attention. But it's locked in court battles over whether its sweeping immigration checks — called "roving patrols" — violate the U.S. Constitution.
- U.S. citizens aren't required to carry around documentation proving their nationality, and agents must have probable cause specific to that individual to ask a person to see their papers.
- At least 170 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE through October of 2025, according to a ProPublica investigation that was denied by Noem.
Zoom in: DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that encounters shown in videos posted online are not "racially based" and said "there's a lot of fear-mongering going on by the media."
- Noem said Thursday that officers are acting appropriately and "in every situation, were doing targeted enforcement."
- "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," Noem said at the White House.
- But immigration attorney Allen Orr told Axios that "at her level, there is no way that [Noem] can tell you about Minnesota, or anywhere else, that every one of her officers are acting appropriately."
The big picture: A shadow-docket ruling from the Supreme Court last September allowed these immigration check stops to occur when there's a combination of suspicions — including appearance, language, accent and workplace — in response to litigation from last summer's Los Angeles immigration raids.
- But this is not the final ruling in the case and the case continues to be argued through the lower courts.
- Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the initial decision, saying it would eliminate "judicial micromanagement."
- "We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent on the ruling.
Between the lines: DHS is being sued in several cases for its arrest tactics used against citizens and noncitizens, alike. Many of the lawsuits argue that using a person's appearance for this kind of immigration enforcement in the country's interior does rely on race.
- In Chicago, Colorado and Washington, D.C., lawsuits have stopped warrantless arrests and even led to the release of people who are undocumented but were arrested without warrants last year.
- There have been long been issues with mistaken arrests and detentions. An investigation from NPR found that more than 800 citizens were detained by ICE from 2007 to 2016.
Driving the news: The ACLU of Minnesota filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging DHS arrest tactics in the Twin Cities and across the state, particularly stops and arrests made allegedly without reasonable suspicion, probable cause or warrants.
- Questioning someone about their immigration status in roving patrols risks violating the Fourth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause, the lawsuit alleges.
- The case claims that people of Somali-origin and Latinos have been particularly impacted.
Zoom in: One plaintiff in the case is Mubashir Khalif Hussen, 20, a U.S. citizen who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia. DHS agents arrested him in December while he was on his work lunch break in Minneapolis.
- Hussen was grabbed and put in a headlock by agents, who then refused to let him show his ID or a photo of his passport card that he had on his phone, according to the suit.
- Hussen repeatedly told the agents that he is a U.S. citizen. But the agents said they needed to scan his face or he'd be taken into custody.
"They ignored both his statements and his documentary proof that he is a U.S. citizen. And at no point did the officers ask Mr. Hussen about his ties to the community," the lawsuit says.
- Hussein was released from an ICE field office hours later without charges, and without being placed into immigration removal proceedings.
The bottom line: "The law moves slow. So in order to get this relief from the courts, it's going to take a while," Orr told Axios.
