US federal immigration agents arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least four states this week in what officials on Friday called routine enforcement actions.
Reports of immigration sweeps this week sparked concern among immigration advocates and families, coming on the heels of President Donald Trump’s executive order barring refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations. That order is currently on hold.
“The fear coursing through immigrant homes and the native-born Americans who love immigrants as friends and family is palpable,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a statement. “Reports of raids in immigrant communities are a grave concern.”
The enforcement actions took place in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and surrounding areas, said David Marin, director of enforcement and removal for the Los Angeles field office of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Only five of 161 people arrested in Southern California would not have been enforcement priorities under the Obama administration, he said.
The agency did not release a total number of detainees. The Atlanta office, which covers three states, arrested 200 people, Bryan Cox, a spokesman for the office, said. The 161 arrests in the Los Angeles area were made in a region that included seven highly populated counties, Marin said.
Marin called the five-day operation an “enforcement surge.”
In a conference call with reporters, he said that such actions were routine, pointing to one last summer in Los Angeles under former President Barack Obama.
“The rash of these recent reports about ICE checkpoints and random sweeps, that’s all false and that’s dangerous and irresponsible,” Marin said. “Reports like that create a panic.”
He said that of the people arrested in Southern California, only 10 did not have criminal records. Of those, five had prior deportation orders.
Michael Kagan, a professor of immigration law at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said immigration advocates are concerned that the arrests could signal the beginning of more aggressive enforcement and increased deportations under Trump.
“It sounds as if the majority are people who would have been priorities under Obama as well,” Kagan said in a telephone interview. “But the others may indicate the first edge of a new wave of arrests and deportations.”
Trump recently broadened the categories of people who could be targeted for immigration enforcement to anyone who had been charged with a crime, removing an Obama-era exception for people convicted of traffic misdemeanors, Kagan said.
Hundreds of immigrants arrested in ‘routine’ US enforcement surge
Hundreds of immigrants arrested in ‘routine’ US enforcement surge
Security lines hit three hours at some US airports as TSA absences rise
- Travelers are facing TSA lines of up to nearly three hours long at some major airports, causing missed flights and massive delays during peak travel
WASHINGTON/NEW ORLEANS: Waiting times in security lines at some US airports extended to three hours on Sunday, as absences by Transportation Security Administration workers rose during a partial government shutdown and as spring-break travel increased.
Houston Hobby Airport at one point on Sunday reported lines averaging 3-1/2 hours, and at 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) the wait times averaged three hours.
Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport advised passengers on Sunday to arrive at least three hours before their scheduled departure and warned delays could continue the rest of the week.
“TSA is experiencing a shortage of workers at the security checkpoint, which is causing longer-than-average lines,” the airport said in a social media post.
Eliana Patterson, who was returning home to Boston, said security lines at the New Orleans airport snaked around the terminal and out an exit into a nearby parking lot. “My flight’s been delayed but if it hadn’t been I’d be a little worried.”
TSA said longer-than-average lines were also reported at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Several airports reported higher-than-normal absences among TSA officials on Sunday. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed on February 13 after Congress failed to reach a deal on immigration enforcement reforms demanded by Democrats. That halted operational funding for several government agencies, including the TSA, resulting in about 50,000 TSA airport security screeners working without pay.
“Travelers are facing TSA lines of up to nearly three hours long at some major airports, causing missed flights and massive delays during peak travel,” the DHS said in a statement.
On Sunday, a group representing major US airlines said the long security lines were causing flights to be delayed and passengers to miss flights.
“Congress and the administration must act with urgency to reach a deal that reopens DHS and ends this shutdown. America’s transportation security workforce is too important to be used as political leverage,” said Chris Sununu, CEO of trade association Airlines for America.
Carriers are expecting a record-breaking spring travel period, with 171 million passengers expected to fly, up 4 percent over the same two-month period last year.
Spring-break travel will heat up just as TSA workers receive their first zero paycheck on March 13, Sununu said. Ha Nguyen McNeill, the top official at the TSA, told Congress last month that around 1,110 transportation security officers left the TSA in October and November 2025 following a 43-day government shutdown, a more than 25 percent increase in departures compared with the same period in 2024.
