Masked, plain-clothed agents are grabbing people they believe are undocumented immigrants off the streets, pulling them into unmarked vehicles and swiftly detaining them.
In other cases, masked agents are running checkpoints in the middle of Washington, D.C., and in L.A., and questioning people in their cars.
And in some situations, agents are smashing the windows of those cars in order to pull a person out.
Immigration agents are often given wide latitude in their work. That means a lot of what the public has been witnessing since President Trump took office — and may be shocked by — is likely legal.
But what is allowable is becoming more unclear as these tactics test the limits of the law, according to immigration law experts.
"In that sense it is a very confusing time for lawyers and the public alike," says Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the UCLA School of Law's Center for Immigration Law & Policy.
NPR asked immigration law experts to explain what we know is and isn't legal when it comes to immigration enforcement.
Q. Federal law gives immigration officials power to arrest and question immigrants. What are those powers? Can they make arrests without warrants?
U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement, the agency in charge of immigration enforcement, was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Congress gave the burgeoning agency wide power to question, search and arrest immigrants, or those believed to be immigrants, without a warrant.
In the past, that has looked like investigative police work and arresting specific targets in specific locations, says Nithya Nathan-Pineau, a policy attorney and strategist at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants' rights.
The Immigration and Nationality Act states that in order to arrest someone without a warrant, officers must have cause, or reasonable suspicion, to believe that a person is in the U.S. illegally and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.
"Leaving aside border checkpoints, immigration officers have power to consensually question anyone, just like a police officer does; but to detain someone even briefly they require individualized suspicion that the person is violating the immigration laws," UCLA's Arulanantham says.
In the past, immigration officers would look for specific people who had, say, a final removal order issued against them or someone who was convicted of a crime – something that would render an individual deportable, Arulanantham says.
Now, in some cases immigration officers are executing major dragnets and arresting large groups of people and then determining if each person is in the U.S. illegally by interrogating them after they've been stopped.
That happened in Los Angeles this summer, when immigration agents stopped people based on their perceived race or ethnicity, according to a lawsuit filed by ACLUSoCal, among others. The plaintiffs argue these actions violate the Fourth Amendment's right to privacy against unreasonable searches and seizures.
A federal court agreed, ruling that agents can't rely on factors such as race, speaking Spanish, wearing workman-like clothes, and location (being present at places such as carwashes or Home Depot parking lots) to meet the standard of "individualized suspicion."
What is supposed to happen and what is happening are two different things, however.
"In the last few weeks it seems that immigration enforcement officers appear to be flouting the judge's order, perhaps because the case is now at the Supreme Court," Arulanantham says.
ICE didn't respond to NPR's questions on how it addresses the individualized suspicion metric.
Q. Are immigration enforcement agents allowed to wear masks or otherwise refuse to identify themselves?
The widespread masking of immigration agents in the streets and even in federal courthouses has stoked fear among immigrant communities and strong objections from civil rights groups. But acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, has said it's a necessary response to what he describes as efforts to dox and threaten these agents and their families. ICE has said there has been a dramatic increase in the doxing of agents but has not said how many cases there have been or provided any details. The agency has not provided any information to support their assertion of an increase in agent doxxing.
But Nathan-Pineau says this violates a federal requirement that immigration agents identify themselves as agents as soon as it is "practical" and "safe" to do so during an arrest. (They are not, however, required to provide their personal names.) She says the regulation is interpreted as agents are allowed not to identify themselves during emergency situations where they have to work fast. But she says she doesn't think the current situation constitutes an emergency that would justify agents not identifying what agency they work for.
At the time of publication ICE had not responded to NPR's question on how the "emergency" element had been defined previously, or whether it has changed, or whether agents not identifying themselves is consistent with policy.
While ICE leadership has endorsed agents' use of masks, and the federal law doesn't mention the use of masks explicitly, there are efforts by lawmakers across the country to bar federal agents from hiding their faces outside of medical or tactical reasons or for undercover work. But there are no current laws requiring agents to show their faces.
Q. Where can officers make arrests? Can they arrest people in their home or a private business?
Immigration officers must have a warrant to arrest people at private businesses or homes. However, there are areas outside homes or in and around apartment buildings and businesses that can be considered public spaces. Immigration agents can, and have, made arrests in those types of areas, such as the lobby of an apartment building that's open to the public or parking lots.
Private businesses have the right to decline entry to ICE.
However, ICE agents have used deceptive practices to gain entry into a person's home or business to make arrests without a warrant, according to a lawsuit filed in 2020 against DHS. This has included ICE agents wearing vests that say "POLICE" and misrepresenting themselves as police or probation officers to trick people into allowing them into their homes or businesses. Four years later, a federal court ruled against this practice called 'knock and talk,' putting a stop to it.
Adding to the confusion, by both subjects of investigations and bystanders, is the fact that ICE agents occasionally take part in broader criminal investigations Similarly, there are rules governing law enforcement's right to search and question a person.
At border checkpoints, like at airports or land crossings, agents have wide latitude to ask questions, search people and detain individuals, Arulanantham says. Otherwise, it's important to understand the difference between a consensual encounter with immigration agents, where people have the right to leave the conversation, and actual detention.
"The first question anyone should ask if they feel uncomfortable when approached by any officer is 'Am I free to leave?' If the officer says they are, then they should exercise their right to leave," Arulanantham says. "If the officer tries not to answer, the individual should repeat the question until they get a response."
"If the officer says 'No,' then the person should not resist, but need not cooperate in any other way," he continues. "So they need not answer any questions."
In general, a person doesn't need to cooperate in any search if officers do not have a warrant, Arulanantham says.
Q. What are the rules on use of force?
Immigration agents are allowed by law to use force when they have "reasonable grounds to believe that such force is necessary," according to DHS policy.
However, the law states an immigration officer should "always use the minimum non-deadly force necessary to accomplish the officer's mission and shall escalate to a higher level of non-deadly force only when such higher level of force is warranted …"
And DHS policy encourages agents to use de-escalation techniques, less-lethal force and less-lethal devices, such as pepper spray and flashbang grenades, in achieving their goals. And they are to only use force that is "objectively reasonable."
It's unclear what the agency considers "objectively reasonable," says Nathan-Pineau.
There have been dozens of recorded instances where agents have smashed car windows in order to pull out suspects. ProPublica reported nearly 50 such instances across the country in the first six months of President Trump's second term.
The government keeps "no relevant statistics" on how common this tactic was previously, according to the outlet. ICE had not responded to NPR's question on this tactic or questions on whether their use of force policy has changed.
"The tremendous use of force that is being used to arrest people is honestly really disturbing to watch," Nathan-Pineau says, citing the incidents of window smashing and agents tackling people in public.
And it's been difficult to determine whether ICE has made changes in its use-of-force policy, she says. "Because the most recent policy that we can find certainly says that the type of force that we're seeing is for emergency situations." Nathan-Pineau says it's helpful that bystanders are increasingly recording these interactions with immigration authorities, but she has seen that immigration officers are intimidating and even arresting these public observers of raids.
That is happening, Arulanantham says, even though federal law allows bystanders the right to record "so long as they are not interfering with the arrest."
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