Trump Ends One Huge Restriction on ICE Ahead of Mass Deportations
The Trump administration on Monday revoked a Biden administration order that prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining undocumented immigrants near schools, places of worship, and other “sensitive locations.”
In a statement the following day, Trump’s acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman announced that the Biden administration’s guidelines on these areas were being rescinded, as well as an end to what the Trump administration has termed the “the broad abuse of humanitarian parole.”
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” the statement said.
The policy change has been in the works for months, as the conservative manifesto Project 2025 included provisions on ICE being allowed to make arrests anywhere. NBC News reported last month about Trump’s plans to end the restrictions on where immigration arrests can take place.
The Biden administration’s order dates back to rules issued in 2011 under the Obama administration. In October 2021, DHS Secretary Antonio Mayorkas expanded the locations to include domestic violence shelters, food banks, counseling facilities, disaster response centers, churches, rallies, and parades.
The move is a return to, and possibly expansion of, the policy under the first Trump administration. From 2017 to 2020, there were at least “63 planned and five exigent ICE arrests at or near a sensitive location,” according to an NBC analysis of ICE data. It’s directly targeting what’s known as the sanctuary movement, which seeks to protect undocumented immigrants seeking refuge at places of worship.
With the Trump administration’s policy change, the public will likely see images and videos of ICE detaining immigrants without regard to the location, in places where children, the sick, and worshippers are present. It seems as though the ugly P.R. resulting from such raids is a secondary concern to Trump, who wants to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. Perhaps the spectacle may be the whole point.