Sensitive Locations Policy: Where ICE Is Restricted from Making Arrests

Last updated 2 weeks ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change.

On January 7, 2026, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, in Minneapolis. Federal and state parties dispute whether her actions posed a legitimate threat that justified the use of deadly force.

Five days later, Minnesota sued the federal government.

The lawsuit describes what state officials call an “occupation”—more than 2,000 armed federal agents deployed to Minneapolis and St. Paul. The Trump administration characterizes this as an operation to enforce immigration law.

Agents have arrested people in schools, hospitals, churches, and funeral homes. They’ve conducted stops based on what people “look and sound like,” according to St. Paul’s mayor. They’ve pointed guns at unarmed individuals, deployed chemical weapons against protesters, and racked up millions in municipal costs that Minneapolis never authorized and actively opposed.

All of this would have been prohibited under a policy that existed for fourteen years—until the administration’s second day in office.

The Sensitive Locations Policy

The sensitive locations policy recognized that operations in certain places destroy their basic function. When ICE agents conduct operations at schools, teachers stop teaching and start managing panic. When they operate at hospitals, sick people delay care they desperately need. When they target courthouses, crime victims stop reporting crimes and witnesses stop testifying. When they raid churches, religious communities lose the one place they thought was safe.

The policy created a straightforward framework. Agents couldn’t conduct operations at schools, hospitals, courthouses, places of worship, or social service agencies except in limited circumstances. National security threats, prior coordination with site officials, emergency situations—these allowed operations to proceed. But routine arrests at a hospital emergency room or an elementary school classroom were prohibited.

The categories of protected locations reflected where vulnerable people congregate and access services they can’t get elsewhere. Schools at every level—elementary through university—because activity traumatizes students regardless of their immigration status. Medical facilities because operations create fear that prevents people from seeking care, where treatable conditions become emergencies because people are too afraid to seek care. Courthouses made the list because the justice system collapses when immigrants won’t enter buildings to testify against criminals or seek protection from domestic violence. Houses of worship because religious freedom is constitutionally protected and because faith communities have historically provided sanctuary. Social service offices made the list because preventing immigrants from accessing benefits, job training, and housing assistance ultimately costs everyone more when people end up homeless or unable to work.

The policy survived both Democratic and Republican administrations because it represented something close to common sense.

Policy Elimination and Operations

On the administration’s second day in office, the new policy structure eliminated categorical protections for sensitive locations, replacing them with case-by-case discretion that effectively removed the restrictions that had previously limited enforcement activity at schools, hospitals, and other protected sites.

What followed was Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago in September 2025. Entire apartment buildings were detained, children included, in what civil rights organizations described as a military assault in a residential neighborhood.

Then Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which began in December 2025 and continues today. This operation deployed over 2,000 armed federal agents into two cities. Minnesota officials characterized the stated federal purpose—immigration enforcement and fraud investigation—as a pretext for political retaliation against the state for its Democratic leadership and accurate election certification.

The operations demonstrated what things look like when protections disappear: agents entering school buildings during class, conducting arrests at medical facilities where patients are receiving treatment, targeting courthouses so crime victims become afraid to enter, raiding churches and funeral homes.

Operations in Minneapolis

The Minnesota complaint documents activity that reads less like law enforcement and more like occupation. Agents conducting patrols where they randomly stop people on streets and in businesses based solely on perceived immigration status.

At schools, agents have arrested teachers directly from classrooms during school hours, forcing administrators to implement emergency lockdowns. At hospitals, activity has made immigrant patients reluctant to seek medical care, creating the public health crisis the policy was designed to prevent. At courthouses, the operations have achieved the predicted effect: crime victims and witnesses now afraid to enter buildings to access justice. At religious facilities, agents have conducted operations that religious leaders characterize as violating freedom of religion and targeting communities based on ethnic identity.

The manner of operations matters as much as the locations. Agents allegedly refuse to identify themselves, use unmarked vehicles, wear masks concealing their identity, and deploy overwhelming force against people who pose no threat. They point firearms at unarmed individuals. They use riot control munitions against peaceful protesters exercising First Amendment rights. They arrest people without warrants and without legal reason. In a city with the largest urban Hmong population in the country, American citizens whose immigration status isn’t apparent from appearance nonetheless find themselves targeted.

Justifications for the Surge

Officials offer multiple explanations for why Minneapolis and St. Paul specifically needed 2,000 armed agents. Initially, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem characterized the surge as necessary to address immigration violations. Texas, Florida, and Utah all have significantly larger undocumented populations and haven’t received comparable surges.

Officials also emphasize fraud investigation related to the “Feeding Our Future” scandal. Federal data shows only a small percentage of those arrested during the surge have been charged with fraud-related offenses. Agents lack specialized expertise in combating fraud.

The pattern extends beyond Minnesota. Trump officials have targeted Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, and Washington, DC—all Democratic municipalities—with aggressive operations while not similarly targeting Republican-controlled areas with comparable undocumented populations.

Officials simultaneously attempted to impose freezes on federal child nutrition funding to Minnesota and federal food assistance.

Constitutional Arguments in the Minnesota Lawsuit

The Minnesota lawsuit advances multiple legal theories, each addressing different dimensions of what the state argues is unlawful federal conduct.

The First Amendment claim: Operation Metro Surge punishes people for their political views and statements. Minnesota officials accurately reported election results and maintained publicly stated positions that sanctuary policies are appropriate. When law enforcement becomes a tool for punishing political opponents, it violates constitutional protections for free speech and political expression.

The Tenth Amendment claim: the operation violates the power states have under the Constitution to control what happens within their borders. Law enforcement and policing power traditionally reside with state and local governments. While the federal government possesses immigration authority, this doesn’t extend to forcing state and local police to work on federal operations and imposing municipal costs for federal actions. These municipal costs exceed $2 million for the first few days of intensive operations.

The Administrative Procedure Act claim: the operation breaks federal rules about how agencies must make decisions. Even if DHS possesses general authority to conduct operations, the manner of exercise violates the APA by failing to follow established procedures, failing to consider relevant factors, and making decisions based on factors wholly unrelated to stated legal requirements. Warrantless stops and arrests based on perceived appearance and accent rather than specific individualized suspicion of violations constitute enforcement based on no clear rules or reasons that violates both immigration statute requirements and APA standards.

The Fourth Amendment claim: the operation involves stops of individuals based solely on perceived immigration status, without the specific facts and reasonable reasons to believe someone broke the law that immigration law requires for stops in the interior of the United States. Agents allegedly refuse to identify themselves, use unmarked vehicles, wear masks concealing their identity, and employ overwhelming force against individuals who pose no threat to officers.

Customs and Border Protection Deployment

A significant aspect of Operation Metro Surge involves who’s conducting it: Customs and Border Protection agents deployed to interior cities to conduct operations. CBP has historically been responsible for border enforcement and deciding who can enter the country at borders—functions that operate under different legal authorities and different operational standards than deporting people from inside the country conducted by ICE. While CBP agents operating at or near the border may conduct warrantless vehicle searches and trespass on private property, these authorities don’t extend to interior operations.

The Illinois complaint challenging similar operations in Chicago notes that CBP agents deployed to interior cities hadn’t received specialized training in deporting people from inside the country before deployment. They didn’t possess the procedures ICE developed for removing people from the country. Instead, CBP brought military-style tactics designed for border security into interior urban environments.

In late October 2025, after officials determined that ICE wasn’t meeting ever-increasing arrest quotas, Trump administration officials orchestrated a purge of ICE leadership and consolidated control of deportation operations under Border Patrol leadership. Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol veteran, was elevated to control interior removal operations. This structural change allowed officials to extend Border Patrol’s more aggressive methodology into interior cities.

Community Impacts

Schools that had normalized operations became obligated to implement emergency lockdowns and security protocols that disrupted instruction and created psychological trauma for students. Businesses across Minneapolis experienced revenue declines of 50-80 percent as customers became too fearful to patronize establishments. Religious communities that had welcomed immigrants as members found their sanctuaries transformed into potential enforcement sites. Hospital administrators reported increased reluctance among immigrant patients to seek medical care.

Mayor Frey articulated the frustration of local officials whose public safety responsibilities are complicated rather than enhanced by federal operations they didn’t authorize and actively opposed. “Minneapolis didn’t ask for this operation, but we’re paying the price.” The city has been forced to absorb millions of dollars in municipal costs to manage the consequences of activity, including police overtime for managing protests, providing perimeter security, and responding to calls from residents confused about whether abductions are occurring.

National Escalation of Interior Operations

Operation Metro Surge represents one component of a broader strategy to dramatically escalate operations across the country’s interior. Government data shows that since the administration took office on January 20, 2025, operations have fundamentally shifted away from the fifteen-year trend of focusing on border enforcement and criminal deportations toward mass interior operations targeting sanctuary cities and Democratic-led jurisdictions. By October 2025, 82 percent of total ICE detainees were arrested in interior operations, compared to 28 percent in the period before the administration took office—a historic shift toward interior action not seen since the Bush and Obama administrations.

DHS has detained more than 65,000 individuals by year’s end, representing the highest detention levels in recorded history.

Officials have invested resources in expanding the apparatus. A Trump administration domestic policy bill appropriated $171 billion through 2029. This includes $46.6 billion to complete the border wall, $45 billion to expand detention centers, and $30 billion on top of ICE’s existing $9.6 billion base budget to support deportation and removal operations. This tripling of ICE’s annual budget to approximately $28 billion has made it the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country. Plans call for increasing ICE deportation officers from 6,000 to 16,000.

Beginning in March 2025, DHS attempted to condition emergency management and disaster preparedness funding on states’ agreement to cooperate. When Minnesota and other states refused these coercive conditions and brought court challenges, a federal judge characterized the administration’s withholding of funds as using money as a weapon to force compliance and ruled the conditions violated constitutional principles. In December 2025, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration couldn’t withhold more than $233 million in funding from states and cities refusing to cooperate with priorities, finding the administration’s withholding based on “political whims” rather than statutory requirements.

Arrest Quotas Driving Operations

Documentation in both the Minnesota and Illinois lawsuits reveals that officials have imposed explicit arrest quotas on agencies. Officials began with a goal of 1,000 daily arrests nationwide in the administration’s first month. They increased this to 3,000 by May 2025. Then they announced an even more expansive goal of removing 100 million residents on December 31, 2025.

These arrest quotas create institutional pressure on agents to make arrests regardless of whether probable cause exists, whether agents have authority to conduct particular stops, or whether targets pose any threat to public safety. Border Patrol chief Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” confirmed in statements to the press that ICE has arrested “many” American citizens by mistake during operations. Homan indicated that ICE may detain people “based on the location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions like [whether] the person walks away”—an acknowledgment that decisions are often based on factors unrelated to immigration status and that violate the statutory requirement of reasonable suspicion.

Operation Metro Surge isn’t genuinely focused on identifying individuals with criminal convictions or serious violations. It’s about meeting numeric targets.

Detention Conditions and Deaths

The expansion of interior operations has overwhelmed the detention system. A September 2025 report from Physicians for Human Rights, the Peeler Immigration Lab, and Harvard University Law School experts documented escalation in keeping detainees alone in cells under the Trump administration, including use for durations and reasons that violate ICE guidelines and international standards for humane detention.

An October 2025 report from the American Civil Liberties Union documented numerous cases of ICE detention of pregnant women, in direct violation of ICE’s own policy against the practice. At least 14 pregnant detainees were held at a single Louisiana facility as of April 2025, with documented cases of miscarriages, denial of prenatal care, and inadequate food and medical attention.

The rapid expansion of detention has forced ICE to rely heavily on private detention facilities, reopening 77 previously shuttered facilities and opening 59 new facilities in 2025. These facilities, operated by corporations like CoreCivic and the Geo Group, often maintain conditions far below government-run facilities and operate with minimal regulatory oversight.

By December 2025, ICE had reported 32 detainee deaths in approximately 11 months since the Trump administration took office, compared to 24 deaths during the entire four-year presidency of Joe Biden—representing a significant increase in the death rate.

State and Local Legislative Responses

State and local governments have begun enacting legislation designed to protect sensitive locations and limit federal operations within their borders. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced plans to propose legislation requiring federal immigration officials to obtain court-approved search warrants before conducting immigration arrests at sensitive locations, barring agents from entering schools, hospitals, and houses of worship without warrants. Pennsylvania has introduced legislation that would prevent immigration arrests inside or within 1,000 feet of Commonwealth facilities, creating a protected zone around state buildings and social services.

These state and local legislative responses reflect an emerging recognition that the federal government’s abandonment of the sensitive locations policy requires states and localities to adopt their own protections if they wish to preserve access to schools, hospitals, courts, and religious spaces for immigrant communities.

While federal immigration law typically takes priority over state law, states argue that they possess the power under the Constitution to control what happens within their borders and to protect the functioning of state and local institutions like education systems, courts, and emergency medical services. The legal question of whether states can impose enforceable restrictions on federal agents operating within state borders remains largely unsettled. The Minnesota lawsuit advances this argument.

Litigation and Constitutional Questions

The Minnesota case moves toward a federal judge’s consideration of whether to grant the court order to immediately stop the operation while the case continues. If granted, such an order would immediately limit DHS, ICE, and CBP activity across Minnesota while the underlying case proceeds, freezing Operation Metro Surge pending full litigation.

The case will inevitably reach appellate courts and potentially the Supreme Court. Fundamental questions about federal authority, state sovereignty, administrative law compliance, and constitutional protections will require resolution. The legal theories advanced in the Minnesota case—First Amendment retaliation, Tenth Amendment state sovereignty, breaking rules about fair decision-making, and Fourth Amendment unreasonable seizures—represent legal principles courts have used before. But their application to immigration operations hasn’t been definitively settled at the highest court level.

A Supreme Court decision on whether states can impose enforceable limits on federal operations, or on whether the administration’s removal of the sensitive locations policy violated statutory or constitutional requirements, would reshape immigration enforcement for years to come.

Constitutional Reckoning Ahead

The Minnesota lawsuit and the broader legal challenge to Operation Metro Surge represent far more than local grievances about federal tactics. They represent a fundamental constitutional reckoning about the extent of federal power in the interior of the country. They address the degree to which state and local governments can resist or circumscribe federal operations. And they raise questions about the baseline rights that Americans—including undocumented immigrants—possess against unreasonable activity.

The Supreme Court has never definitively resolved whether the sensitive locations policy represents a statutory requirement, an agency obligation, or discretionary guidance that can be abandoned at executive whim. It hasn’t authoritatively addressed whether arrest quotas violate the Administrative Procedure Act or the constitutional requirement that laws treat people fairly. Most fundamentally, the Minnesota case raises a question that goes beyond immigration: whether federal agencies can be deployed as tools of political retaliation against jurisdictions and officials who oppose administration policies.

If the court accepts the argument that Operation Metro Surge constitutes punishing people for their political beliefs and statements, it would establish significant precedent limiting the administration’s ability to use operations to punish political opponents. If it accepts the Tenth Amendment arguments about state sovereignty, it could establish that states retain enforceable authority to protect the functioning of state institutions from federal disruption. If it accepts the APA arguments about arbitrary enforcement, it could establish that operations lacking individualized suspicion and based on race and apparent national origin violate federal administrative law standards.

The outcome won’t be known for months or potentially years as litigation proceeds through federal courts. In the interim, Operation Metro Surge and similar operations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities continue. Undocumented immigrants, mixed-status families, and immigrant communities bear the costs of policies that courts haven’t yet definitively evaluated.

The sensitive locations policy that existed for fourteen years has been abandoned through executive action. Whether that abandonment stands or whether courts will reinstate core protections for schools, hospitals, courts, and churches remains to be determined through the legal system—a system itself disrupted when immigrants fear entering courthouses to participate in justice. The Minnesota case will ultimately decide not only the fate of Operation Metro Surge but the constitutional boundaries of immigration enforcement in the American interior and the degree to which democracy itself can function when federal enforcement becomes a tool of political retaliation.

Our articles make government information more accessible. Please consult a qualified professional for financial, legal, or health advice specific to your circumstances.