Mayorkas orders ICE to stop worksite raids, in latest limits on immigration enforcement

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately stop any mass worksite deportation raids, in what is the latest limit placed on ICE's deportation powers.

"The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country’s unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers," Mayorkas said in a memo to acting ICE Director Tae Johnson.

"These highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations," he said.

The use of worksite raids to detain and potentially deport illegal immigrants working there became a more regular practice during the Trump administration. The most notable raid was the arrest of nearly 700 illegal aliens at food processing plants in Mississippi in 2019 -- in what became the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.