Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Minor

Clarify ERO's authority to arrest and remove aliens anywhere in the U.S.

Not started

142 5. Department of Homeland Security

“The role of ICE Deportation Officers should be clarified. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) should be identified as being primarily responsible for enforcing civil immigration regulations, including the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate, subject only to the civil warrant requirements of the INA where appropriate.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No instrument clarifying the role of ICE Deportation Officers or identifying ERO as primarily responsible for civil arrest, detention and removal anywhere in the United States was found. ICE has in practice conducted interior civil arrests at scale, but the clarification of authority the Quote asks for has not been published on any allowlisted source.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Instrument sought: a DHS or ICE directive identifying Enforcement and Removal Operations as primarily responsible for civil immigration enforcement anywhere in the United States, including warrantless arrest.

Searched 2026-08-28: presidential documents, final rules, proposed rules and notices in the Federal Register from DHS and its components; bills in Congress and public laws, from congress.gov; White House presidential actions; and federal court dockets (CourtListener), including a bulk snapshot of 1.2 million dockets. Nothing clarifying ERO’s role was found. EO 14159 section 4 addresses Homeland Security Investigations’ mission (tracked as #313) and tells component heads to set enforcement priorities; it does not define ERO’s authority, so under the rule that progress is measured on this ask it is noted rather than cited.

  • The nationwide expedited-removal designation (#316) expands where ICE may remove people summarily, which is a different instrument answering a different Quote.
Action
expand
Object
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations authority
ID
314