ICE’s new targets post-Minnesota retreat

Following a slew of backlash over the shooting deaths of two American citizens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ended its immigration surge in Minnesota. This may cause the temperature in Minneapolis to cool, but the agency is now looking ahead toward new cities, spreading concern among Democratic officials about there being more social unrest to come.

Other cities in ICE’s sights

Several cities and states are reportedly on ICE’s list to send officers into. One of the most notable is actually a Republican-led state: The Trump administration is “eyeing Ohio for immigration enforcement operations” that are “expected to target Haitian immigrants,” said MS Now. This is largely due to the expiration of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) earlier this month.

If this does happen, Springfield, Ohio, would likely be one of the most targeted cities. Springfield has an estimated Haitian population of 12,000 to 15,000 and was the target of a conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs that was spread by both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, later proven to be false. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials claim they do “not have concrete plans to launch immigration enforcement efforts in Springfield but plan to deport Haitian immigrants,” said WCMH-TV Columbus.

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Prominent Democrat-led areas are also likely to enter ICE’s crosshairs. In a public town hall for the San Francisco Bay Area, officials “asked the question: Could Northern California be the next target for a heavy-handed federal immigration enforcement crackdown?” said Bay City News. This concern follows claims that ICE would conduct immigration operations at Super Bowl LX, which took place in Santa Clara (ICE agents did not end up patrolling the game, according to the NFL).

As a result, places in California such as Oakland’s Alameda County are “hoping to create a response plan” for ICE activities, said KGO-TV San Francisco. This includes policy proposals to “ensure there’s a countywide response plan to ICE activity,” as well as a plan to “create ICE-free zones.”

‘The biggest driver’

There are also questions as to how ICE determines which cities to target. While the Trump administration has largely been quiet on this, former ICE officials have been more vocal. The “biggest driver would be immigrant population, how significant a population is there in that particular community,” John Sandweg, who served as director of ICE from 2013 to 2014, said to Fox News.

Another determinant is if there’s a “sanctuary policy that would increase the number of at-large targets," said Sandweg to Fox. Those are the “traditional factors that ICE would rely on in making determinations about where to do at-large surges.”

Despite DHS potentially losing funding due to a partial government shutdown, these targeted enforcement efforts may not end soon. ICE “does not have the manpower” to target every city in the U.S., said Jacob Hamburger, a law professor at Marquette University, to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. But the “point of a lot of these operations is to get everybody thinking, ‘What if we’re next?’”