ICE clarifies no raids or sweeps in Houston targeting undocumented immigrants despite rumors

Over the last week, immigration operations conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in cities across the United States have created discourse over the future of the country as it enters a second Trump administration.

These operations have already impacted Houston. School districts have had to clarify their immigration policies, and the Houston Farmer’s Market saw a sharp decline in vendors due to fear of potential raids.

READ MORE: Houston farmers market sees decline amid immigration raid fears

Since President Trump’s inauguration, ICE itself has started releasing daily statistics for “arrests” and “detainers lodged,” creating the appearance that the organization has dramatically ramped up its performance since Jan. 20.

With anxiety over the idea of immigration raids, KPRC 2′s Bryce Newberry spoke with an ICE official to get more clarity on what is going on.

Here’s what ICE told KPRC 2:

• All of ICE’s activities in Houston have been standard, targeted operations. There have not been any “ICE raids,” or random sweeps of areas looking for undocumented immigrants.
• The “targeted operations” are looking for individuals who ICE considers “threats to public safety, national security or border security.” A large majority of the individuals that fit into this criterion have been people with pending criminal charges or convictions, or what ICE calls “repeat immigration offenders” with a final order.
• “A lot” of the people taken into custody from these operations were already incarcerated, having come from Houston jails.
• It is “common” for ICE to work with other federal law enforcement organizations, such as the DEA.
• ICE Houston covers 57 total counties, and there is no official arrest data available exclusively covering the Houston area at this time.
• The ICE official pointed to statistics from the 2024 fiscal year, which showed that ICE Houston Enforcement & Removal Operations (ERO) had the highest number of immigration-related arrests of undocumented individuals with pending criminal charges or criminal convictions.
• According to the ICE source, 90% of immigration related arrests in the ICE Houston 57-county area have pending criminal charges or criminal convictions—the highest percentage among ICE branches in the U.S. KPRC 2 is working to verify this data.
• There are multiple ICE processing facilities across the Houston area, including two in Conroe, one in Livingston and the Houston Contract Detention Facility near George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
• If an ICE official checks the identification of an undocumented immigrant without a criminal record while conducting an unrelated operation, that person can legally be arrested, but it is handled on a case-by-case basis. The ICE official called these “collateral arrests,” and there is not available data on how many there have been in Houston at this time.
• The ICE official called the recent practices “routine, targeted enforcement operations.”
• “There is a lot of fear... [There is] no reason for fear,” he told KPRC 2.