I assume they have a squad meeting with today’s targets spelled out. Where does the list of supposed illegals come from?
From the people they pick up, after the fact.
Here in Minneapolis, they went after an old man (a US citizen), broke in the door of his house, cuffed him, wouldn’t allow him to get dressed but hauled him out in shorts & sandals. Said that he was an illegal and a sex offender. (Some of you may have seen video of this.)
He was released later when it was found that the sex offender they wanted was in prison, and had been since 2024. Was also about 20-30 years younger than the citizen they grabbed, and did not have much resemblance to him – except they had the same (ethnic) name.
So it appears some of their ‘leads’ may be just searching online records to find people whose names match. But without cross-checking other info, seems like an error-prone procedure.
If they’re still published (I haven’t gotten one in years), I’d say “the phone book.”
Arrest reports and court rulings.
The Top priority is removing criminals that choose to come to the US and take advantage of our most vulnerable people. Mugging the elderly and selling drugs to children make easy targets.
Unfortunately that also means innocent, hard-working immigrants are unfairly getting swept up by ICE.
AFAIK the court records are the first place ICE checks.
I think you mean that the top priority is removing as many as possible so the Trump can boast about it. 
Indeed (plus a few get shot by badly trained ICE newbies.) 
Immigration is a inherited problem.
Our borders were lax and porous for a long time.
A huge number of people came in and no one knows anything about their past histories. No one wants gang members in the US.
Hard working families that want a better life are always welcome.
Trump is making it much worse with his heavy handed approach.
But, the problem is still there and getting worse. I wish it were handled responsibly. There has to be a better way than public round-ups.
This current cluster-fuck by Trump is a travesty.
Who’s “top priority”? AIUI the majority of the people that ICE has “swept up” are innocent, hard-working immigrants.
Says no one in our current “government”.
This is what they would like people to believe. Reality is that they are arresting people whose only crime is being an undocumented immigrant, and sometimes they are arresting people who are here legally.
The linked AP article reports on 8 Gangs recognized by the State Dept as terrorists.
The cartels operate in Mexico and Venezuela. Murdering cops and judges that get in their way.
They murdered a Mayor 1 week after taking office.
A year later. Another government official assassinated.
Link Seven bodyguards arrested over Mexico mayor’s assassination | Crime News | Al Jazeera
I fully understand the overwhelming majority of immigrants are honest, hard-working people who just want to live in freedom. They shouldn’t be afraid of being arrested and deported.
What Trump is doing is vile, putrid, and illegal.
It’s been a policy going back decades that anyone who is convicted of a crime and found to be in the country illegally is deported back to their home country. We’ve always deported criminals.
The new policy is to round up people who are breaking no laws and causing no problems.
I had the impression ICE was looking at old cases.
I don’t remember the specific news report. But, ICE arrested a guy with a decade old drug charge.
Whats happening now is sickening. I guess only the Supreme Court can stop Trump.
Congress won’t do shit. They lost their guts and any validity to govern a long time ago.
They may be doing some of that. But most of what they are doing is creating terror and fear among people who aren’t Trump’s supporters, and people of color.
Because ICE is looking for any reason to deport people. A decade old charge for having a single joint does not deporting a drug dealer make.
I’ve avoided the Immigration threads.
The OP asked what ICE used for leads. That is a valid question. How do they track down a guy and his family working at Seven Eleven in Po-dunk America?
ICE is active even here in rural Arkansas.
I thought it was old police logs and court cases. Apparently that’s been over emphasized in the media.
Do you have a Ring doorbell camera? Congratulations, you’re helping! People thought I was crazy when the things first came out for saying Bezos (who has gotten millions in CIA contracts) had figured out how to make the American people voluntarily pay to set up the biggest surveillance network on the planet. Because all the videos and audio from Ring doorbells goes straight to AWS and from there straight to the alphabet agencies.
Kill your Ring, seriously. And dump Alexa and Siri while you’re at it.
No, the government has been lying about who they’re going after from the start,
Last week, I published data leaked from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showing that 73 percent of individuals booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities since October 1, 2025, had no criminal convictions of any kind—only 5 percent had violent criminal convictions.
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-data-prove-dhs-lied-about-cato-report-ice
More people with fucking traffic violations (6%) than violent criminals (5%),
Yeah, if ICE was legitimately hunting down people who basically have done the immigration equivalent of skipping bail, and going through all the procedure and legal rigamarole to properly find them and detain them in a professional manner, I don’t think this would be nearly such a huge issue.
But what’s happening instead is that the Trump administration has hired swarms of half-trained agents and in conjunction with the existing ones (who were never the Federal cream of the crop, mind you), is using what amount to terror tactics and shotgun approaches to finding and detaining anyone who might be illegal, and being very heavy-handed about it, without doing any of the expected due diligence to make sure these people are you know, NOT US citizens beforehand, or that they’re not little kids, or whatever.
The point isn’t to legitimately round up unlawful immigrants and deport them, it’s to sow fear and chaos in those communities, and (presumably) make it so unwelcoming for people who have an option to go elsewhere to do so.
Absolutely. They talk about encouraging “self-deporting” all the time.
Yup, that’s how my ancestors came in, and those of the ICE agents, and I’m pretty sure also yours.
The people ICE are going after, though, are mostly the ones who came in when border controls were very tight, plus a side helping of those whose presence predates the borders.