ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony [View all]

Source: The Guardian

US immigration agents in Oregon used a custom-made app to identify neighborhoods and people to target, and had daily arrest quotas they sought to meet during operations, courtroom testimony has revealed.

Details about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers' surveillance tools and arrest goals in the state have come to light in a federal lawsuit that compelled officers to answer questions under oath, offering a rare window into opaque, internal strategies that are generally kept secret and have been driving mass detentions and chaotic raids.
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Testimony in a December hearing in the case provided a remarkable acknowledgment by an ICE officer of how daily target arrest numbers played out at the local level, and appeared to contradict the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials' repeated claims that officers didn't have quotas. Trump adviser Stephen Miller has publicly said the administration's target was 3,000 daily arrests. The hearing also appeared to be the first time that ICE disclosed in court its use of an app called Elite for operations.

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JB acknowledged information generated by Elite could be inaccurate: "The app could say 100%, and it's wrong. The person doesn't live there. And so it's not accurate. It's a tool that we use that gives you probability, but there's ... no such thing as 100%." Officers have to do "checks" on the intelligence, he said.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/13/ice-agent-court-testimony-oregon