Investigation Finds More Than 93% of ICE Street Arrests Targeted Latino People in NY-NJ Region

A review of 430 ICE street arrests found Latino immigrants were overwhelmingly targeted across New York and New Jersey, while DHS denied allegations of racial profiling.

ICE agents conduct a street enforcement action in New York City. A City Reporter investigation reviewed 430 ICE street arrests in the New York-New Jersey region and found that more than 93% involved Latino people.

ICE agents conduct a street enforcement action in New York City. A City Reporter investigation reviewed 430 ICE street arrests in the New York-New Jersey region and found that more than 93% involved Latino people.

An investigation of ICE street arrests in the New York-New Jersey region found that more than 93% of reviewed arrests involved Latino people, raising new allegations that immigration enforcement is operating through a racial-profiling pattern in one of the country’s most diverse regions.

The City Reporter investigation reviewed 430 ICE street arrests across the region. According to the findings, 402 of the people arrested were Latino. That share far exceeded Latinos’ estimated share of the undocumented population in the region, which the investigation reported at about 66%.

The numbers cut through the usual language of “targeted enforcement.” This was not a review of isolated arrests. It was a five-month pattern of ICE street enforcement in New York and New Jersey, including sanctuary jurisdictions where immigrant communities are already forced to navigate surveillance, courthouse arrests, workplace threats, and street-level fear.

Critics and legal experts described the findings as evidence of systemic racial profiling. DHS denied the accusation, but the public record still shows the pattern: ICE street arrests overwhelmingly fell on Latino people in the region reviewed.

That matters because racial profiling in immigration enforcement is not just a data point. It changes how people move through public life. It tells Latino immigrants and Latino communities that a walk down the street, a commute, a courthouse appearance, or an ordinary public moment can become an ICE encounter.

ICE’s denial does not erase the enforcement pattern documented in the review. When more than 93% of reviewed street arrests involve Latino people in a region where Latinos are a much smaller share of the undocumented population, the public record has to name what those arrests show.

This is the work Americans Against ICE exists to document: the raids, arrests, detention systems, private contractors, racialized enforcement patterns, and immigrant communities forced to live under ICE power.

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ICE street arrests do not disappear when the news cycle moves on.

They become fear in immigrant neighborhoods, silence in public spaces, and records the government would rather leave scattered.

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