Experts explain your rights – as an immigrant or a bystander – if you’re caught up in an ICE raid
- - Experts explain your rights – as an immigrant or a bystander – if you’re caught up in an ICE raid
Chelsea Bailey, CNNAugust 23, 2025 at 3:30 AM
ICE officers form a barrier June 6 to block protesters after a raid in Los Angeles. - Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
As the Trump administration ramps up efforts to detain and deport undocumented people, dramatic videos of immigration arrests from California to New York have sparked reactions from applause to backlash across the nation’s broad political spectrum.
The Department of Homeland Security received over 100,000 applications in recent weeks “from patriotic Americans who want to join ICE and help remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States,” Secretary Kristi Noem said.
“This is a defining moment in our nation’s history,” she said in a news release.
Her agency also has faced sharp criticism and legal setbacks over its enforcement tactics, which have become a key piece of the Trump administration’s broader and unpopular immigration crackdown.
Still, the Department of Homeland Security – which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and Customs and Border Protection, or CBP – is set to expand arrests, often in places undocumented immigrants used to feel safe and in plain view of anyone with a cell phone camera.
CNN asked immigration and legal experts and Trump administration officials to explain the rights of witnesses and immigrants during an ICE encounter. Here’s what we learned:
Q. Are bystanders allowed to film ICE interactions?
Witnesses generally have a right to film an encounter with ICE in public as long as they are not interfering with the arrest, experts told CNN.
Some states, however, have sought to restrict recording of law enforcement by passing buffer zone laws that mandate bystanders keep a certain distance from police activity. Some of those laws face court challenges on First Amendment grounds.
Even apart from that issue, recording an ICE encounter is not without risk.
“I understand that some bystanders might feel less able to intervene,” said Austin Rose, managing attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “And the reality is that you’re not going to prevent (the arrest) from happening in the vast majority of situations.”
“There are real risks,” he added. “I think filming is really helpful … it’s important that people know what’s going on.”
Q. Can anyone warn someone about ICE?
Noem has suggested apps that crowdsource ICE activity or flag ICE sightings could interfere with federal law enforcement – and threatened to punish users.
“This sure looks like obstruction of justice,” the secretary wrote in a June social media post. “If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
But any effort to prosecute someone for warning of a potential arrest would run afoul of a considerable body of legal precedent that holds alerting people of a possible arrest is First Amendment-protected speech.
Q. What questions can witnesses ask as someone is being detained?
If someone sees an ICE arrest, it could be useful to learn a detainee’s biographical information – name, date of birth and country of origin – if the witness wants to keep up with the case using public databases or help someone like a reporter, lawyer or relative do so, said Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center.
“Try and get someone’s name.” he suggested. “Try and say, ‘Is there somebody you want me to call?’”
Still, “sometimes there’s not a chance to do that,” Luken said, warning that bystanders should also assess their own risk – especially if they are undocumented – and adding that no one has the right to directly interfere with an ICE operation.
Bystanders can try to ask ICE agents questions as long as they’re not interfering, Rose said. But, he added, they’re under no obligation to respond.
“ICE is likely not to answer your questions,” he said, “but I think an important thing to ask about is (whether they have) a warrant.”
Federal agents detain a man after his court hearing in New York on July 9. - Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/FileQ. How serious an offense is it to be undocumented in the United States?
The Trump administration has made clear it views being an undocumented immigrant in the United States as a crime.
“We’re going to enforce the immigration law,” border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash last month. “It’s not OK to be in this country illegally. It’s not OK to enter this country illegally. It’s a crime.”
But when it comes to how immigration arrests are conducted – and what rights a detained person has – the legal basis for the arrest matters, immigrant rights and legal experts told CNN.
It’s important to understand that crossing the border and being undocumented in the United States generally is a civil infraction, not a criminal offense, Lukens said.
This distinction sets the tone for how ICE agents interact with the people they’ve apprehended, he said.
For instance, agents “do not have to Mirandize someone because it’s not a criminal arrest,” Lukens said, referring to the practice of informing someone of their legal rights once they’re in custody.
The civil offense also affects the type of judge who will hear the case, whether an arrestee is entitled to legal representation and how quickly the Department of Homeland Security can remove someone from the United States. (More on that later.)
Notably, re-entering the United States after being deported is a felony, and a conviction could result in a fine and up to two years in prison, the US Criminal Code states. Those penalties increase if the person is also charged with a drug-related or other criminal offense, which could land someone found guilty up to 20 years in prison.
Q. What are an immigrant’s rights during an ICE encounter?
No matter their legal status, everyone is entitled to protection from unreasonable search and seizure and excessive use of force under the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, said Jenn Borchetta, deputy director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project.
“There needs to be a reasonable basis to believe the person they’re stopping is either in the country illegally or otherwise is committing some kind of immigration violation,” she told CNN.
Meanwhile, “the unnecessarily aggressive conduct we’ve seen from immigration agents is really an escalation and outgrowth of police tactics that are usually confined only to certain neighborhoods,” Borchetta said.
For example, footage of CBP agents opening fire on and smashing the windows of a family’s truck in San Bernadino, California, during a targeted immigration enforcement operation this week has drawn criticism from activists and immigration attorneys. The officers acted in self-defense after a man “struck two CBP officers with his vehicle,” the Department of Homeland Security said.
Constitutional protections “only exist if they apply to everyone,” Borchetta said. “If federal agents don’t need reasonable suspicion to detain people, they can go out and stop anybody on the street. That means they can stop citizens.”
“Every ICE officer goes through Fourth Amendment training every six months and (is) reminded what their authorities are for arrest, detention and questioning so the officers (are) very well-trained,” Homan told CNN.
Q. How does ICE typically identify someone agents are going to question or detain?
ICE is “conducting intelligence-based, targeted enforcement operations,” an agency spokesperson told CNN in a recent statement.
Under past White House administrations, ICE would apprehend someone if they were aware the person had committed a crime or were caught at the border or because a judge granted a warrant for their removal, Lukens told CNN.
While apprehending such a person, he added, it was “not odd for (ICE agents) to also walk down the hallway of the apartment building and say, ‘Do you have your status? Do you have your papers?’”
Anyone who said no could also be detained, Lukens said.
Under the second Trump administration, however, ICE tactics have gotten more aggressive, with workplace raids – like those this summer at Los Angeles-area farms and Home Depot sites – becoming increasingly common, he said.
Trump’s border czar defended the agency’s tactics after a judge blocked the administration from conducting immigration stops and arrests in Southern California over concerns agents were engaging in profiling and lacked probable cause.
“(ICE agents) don’t need probable cause to briefly detain and question someone, they just need ‘reasonable suspicion,’” Homan told CNN last month. “Physical description cannot be the sole reason to detain and question somebody … It’s a myriad of factors. Every situation is different.”
After Homan vowed to “litigate” the order, a federal appeals court upheld the halting of immigration sweeps.
Q. Does someone have to show ID or answer questions during an ICE encounter?
While state laws require a motorist stopped by police to show a driver’s license upon request, there is otherwise no legal obligation to carry and show an ID – including citizenship papers or a passport – to law enforcement upon request, Rose said.
“You’re under no constitutional obligation to give your name or to give any papers,” he said. “The problem, though, is that you don’t feel you’re free to leave in this situation. And so, I think people understandably try to comply.”
However, the onus changes once someone is in custody or has been arrested, he added.
“Once you’re arrested, you arguably have to provide ID and information, and so timing there can kind of matter and be a little tricky.”
Over the years, Rose has seen “a difference between what the law is and should be, and what the reality is,” he said.
“In general, the law is that noncitizens do have the same constitutional rights with respect to the due process clause (of the Fifth Amendment) and other provisions of the Constitution, as citizens,” he said. “But the practical reality is often different.”
Q. Do immigrants have a right to an attorney?
Because being undocumented is often a civil infraction, immigrants are not automatically provided an attorney as they would be in a criminal case, Borchetta said: “Unfortunately, access to counsel can be a problem. Your access to the outside isn’t as protected as in a criminal context.”
However, some states, like New York, are working to pass laws requiring those who are facing deportation to have access to an attorney. “That’s why you see people getting detained in New York and sent to Louisiana,” Borchetta said.
Attorneys and immigration rights advocates often offer legal services to those in detention, but such organizations are struggling to keep up with the “firehose” of demand, Lukens said.
Further complicating matters, the Department of Homeland Security takes the position it does not have to let attorneys into detention centers, though that stance is contested.
“We’re not in the jails as much as we used to be because they don’t have to let us in,” Lukens said. “So, it’s harder to do the work.”
A migrant is detained and escorted July 17 by masked federal immigration officers at a US immigration court in New York. - David Dee Delgado/ReutersQ. ICE agents have been wearing masks and driving unmarked cars. Do they have to identify themselves?
Citing concerns over online doxxing and officers’ safety, many ICE agents have begun wearing balaclavas and neck gaiters to cover their faces while conducting immigration sweeps. ICE did not immediately respond to CNN’s questions about its mask policy and whether and how agents should identify themselves.
For now, there is no legal requirement for federal agents to identify themselves, experts told CNN.
“At the same time, it puts both agents and the public at risk if they don’t,” Borchetta said. “If someone is legitimately confused about who is detaining them, then that could cause the person to legitimately respond with force or other reactions that escalate a situation and put everyone at risk.”
Q. How can a loved one or lawyer find someone they believe has been detained over an immigration issue?
Locating someone who’s been apprehended over an immigration issue can be incredibly difficult. The Department of Homeland Security and its agents are not obligated to answer questions from family members, journalists or citizens, experts told CNN.
There are publicly available databases – such as the online detainee locator – where anyone can search for people held in ICE facilities, Rose said.
“All noncitizens, if they’ve had any contact with the immigration system – whether that’s border patrol or ICE – will have a nine-digit ‘A-number,’” he said. “You can use that to find out where they’re detained.”
An A-number can also be used to look up the basics of a pending immigration case, including whether someone has an order for removal or an immigration hearing has been scheduled.
“Having those numbers is pivotal,” Rose said, cautioning the databases rely on information submitted by ICE and Department of Homeland Security employees that, given the increased rate of apprehensions and detentions, may not be up to date.
The ICE detainee database also can be searched using someone’s first and last name, country of origin and exact birthdate.
CNN’s Catherine Shoichet contributed to this report.
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