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Editor’s Note, 1/8/2026: This article was originally published in January 2025 and has been updated to include current information.
An early campaign promise from President Donald Trump prior to his 2024 election victory was to initiate mass deportations as quickly as possible – one he has followed through with over the past year.
“I don’t want to say when, but it’s going to happen,” Trump said prior to his second inauguration when asked about his timeline for proposed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. “It has to happen, or we’re not going to have a country left.”
Just before that, The Wall Street Journal released an unconfirmed list of cities that ICE officers would descend upon, which included Dallas, along with Chicago, Denver, and Miami. At the time, Mayor Eric Johnson pledged his support in assisting the president in his deportation efforts.
“Of course, we’d stand by President Trump in an effort to get rid of people in our country illegally who have violent criminal records or who commit violent criminal acts here,” the mayor said in an interview with Fox in 2024. “But even more than that, people need to understand it’s a strain on our school system, it’s a strain on our hospital system. There are hidden costs to having a porous, open border, and we need to shut that down.”
Since then, North Texas has been a hotbed of ICE activity, including arrests, detentions and deportations. According to a new Dallas Morning News report, the majority of those arrested by ICE in Dallas in 2025 did not have criminal records at the time, although federal officials began the year saying that only the “worst of the worst” criminals would be targeted by ICE.
Questions about the scope of an ICE officer’s authority have intensified following a deadly shooting in Minnesota on Jan. 7 when a masked ICE agent killed 37-year-old Renee Good, a mother of three and a documented U.S. citizen, during a traffic dispute. But the Constitution guarantees due process to everyone, not only documented citizens. The Observer has compiled a list of information on how to prepare in the event of an ICE raid:
