A week into President Donald Trump's second term, his administration started moving forward with mass deportation plans, making good on a campaign promise but also stoking fear in immigrant communities throughout the Pittsburgh region and beyond.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ramped up efforts to meet deportation quotas increased from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200. ICE enforcement resulted in at least 5,500 arrests nationally between Jan. 24 and Jan. 29, according to daily updates posted by the agency on X, the latest of which came Wednesday.
Trump has signed several executive orders touching on immigration issues ranging from strengthening border security to revoking birthright citizenship. While some of the orders face legal challenges and have been paused, others have already been rolled out.
The Post-Gazette spoke to immigration lawyers and advocates about how the new administration’s policies could impact the Pittsburgh region.
What they’re seeing
Kristen Schneck, an immigration attorney and chair of the Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers, offered up the first description of an ICE action in the area last week, one that resulted in the detention of three Guatemalans, including two minors.
Ms. Schneck said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers on Jan. 25 approached workers waiting to enter a restaurant in a Pittsburgh suburb. Ms. Schneck, who is working on the case of one minor now detained, declined to name the establishment.
No one was charged with criminal activity, so their detainment is considered a "civil arrest," she said. All three were taken to ICE's Pittsburgh field office on the South Side.
One minor was released, while the other minor and the adult were ultimately transported to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Centre County. The detained minor is scheduled for a court hearing next week.
Officials elsewhere confirmed another incident in Washington County last week in which several people were identified as undocumented and eligible for deportation.
It's unclear why ICE agents released one of the people detained outside the restaurant in the Pittsburgh suburb. Ms. Schneck speculated the agency may have neared or reached its quota for the day. White House officials recently told senior ICE officials that every field office must make 75 arrests per day or managers will be held accountable, the Washington Post reported.
What happens after an arrest
Being arrested by ICE doesn't always lead to immediate detention in a federal immigration facility. A person may be released with an order to appear in court at a later date.
When targeting people either convicted of or facing criminal charges, ICE may issue a detainer for that person — an administrative request to a local jail to hold the person for an additional 48 hours after their scheduled release date. That is meant to give federal authorities time to decide whether to take that person into custody for deportation proceedings.
An Allegheny County Jail spokesperson told the Post-Gazette that the facility would not hold inmates on federal immigration charges alone, meaning that anyone arrested by ICE could not be held at the jail unless the person also faced charges from another criminal justice agency. Per policy, the jail also will also not honor immigration detainers requesting to have an an inmate held past a scheduled release.
Anyone arrested by ICE in Pittsburgh will have to be transported two and a half hours away to the Moshannon facility.
Who is being targeted?
Pittsburgh immigration attorney Joseph Murphy said the Trump administration will likely prioritize deportation of three groups: noncitizens involved in organized crime, individuals who were previously deported, and those with no immigration status at all.
Ms. Schneck described the detainment of the three people outside the restaurant last week as "very typical of ICE's modus operandi."
"Workers were waiting outside to be let in…[the officers] started questioning them about their names and nationality, and that's very typical ICE conduct when they go out on enforcement operations," she said.
Many attorneys who deal with immigration issues have been working with deportation cases for years.
Under former President Joe Biden’s administration, immigration authorities last year deported more than 271,000 undocumented immigrants — the largest number in nearly a decade, surpassing the numbers seen during Trump's first term in office, according to a 2024 report from ICE. About 89,000 of those deported last year had criminal charges or convictions, according to the report.
The Obama administration was also active in deporting unauthorized immigrants, most notably in 2012, when 409,849 people were deported.
In 2015, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the arrests of more than 2,000 people nationwide in one week, targeting criminals.
Sheila Vélez Martínez, director of clinical programs at the University of Pittsburgh's Immigration Law Clinic, said enforcement patterns in the region now appear to be going beyond the targeted enforcement outlined in the president’s executive orders.
Department of Homeland Security and ICE officials state that their operations are focusing on people with serious criminal records or deportation orders.
"Going into businesses, checking everybody's status — that is not targeted enforcement," she said. "Targeted enforcement is when you are looking for someone and you have an order of deportation, where you have a warrant for that person."
On Friday, ICE announced it had conducted a worksite enforcement operation Tuesday at a car wash in Philadelphia “based on allegations employees were being subjected to labor exploitation,” according to the release. The agency said it arrested “seven illegal aliens for immigration violations, who were subsequently detained pending removal.”
A recent administration memo empowered authorities to exercise what's known as expedited removal for migrants who have been present in the U.S. for up to two years. It's a kind of fast-track deportation process. Ms. Vélez Martinez said she believes it can be fraught with errors and it risks deporting people with legitimate claims to be in the country.
Trump, in one of the recent orders, laid out his assessment that “the current situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States,” part of the rationale for the steps that the administration is taking.
Conflicting narratives
Uncertainty and stepped up publicity about ICE encounters have raised tensions among the local immigrant community, Ms. Schneck said, with many refusing to leave their houses or show up for work even if they have legal status.
"While there is a big public support currently to detain immigrants, what the community needs to understand is how this is going to affect the local economy, the operation of restaurants and businesses." Ms. Schneck said.
People of Latino or Hispanic descent make up about 3% of the population in Allegheny County, which counts about 1.2 million residents, according to census data.
Mr. Murphy said false claims have run rampant across social media. He offered as an example rumors circulating online that ICE officials were targeting immigrants with legal status. "There's been no information on that," he said.
"Unless you're here on a green card or tourist visa and you start doing felonies ... that wouldn't go good for you in any country."
Local organizations have taken to social media in an attempt to quell rumors. "Spread power not panic," a spokesperson for 1Hood, a Pittsburgh nonprofit, wrote in an Instagram post that asked the public to report ICE sightings to local rapid response networks or community-based groups or organizations coordinating to respond to emergencies. "Let's keep our community safe by only sharing verified reports," it says.
Those searching for loved ones can use ICE's online detainee locator system to find anyone in custody for at least two days.
What rights do people have
Often, if immigrants are in the U.S. without documentation, they reveal their status to ICE officials when they are not obligated to do so, which Mr. Murphy refers to as "self-deporting."
All people residing in the U.S. have the right to remain silent, regardless of legal status. When stopped by officials in a public place, immigrants can refuse to submit to a search or to show identity documents. They can request to speak to a lawyer or contact their consulate to find one.
If immigration officials come to someone's home, people do not have to open the door, regardless of legal status, immigration attorneys say.
Mr. Murphy advises his clients to ask officials to slide a warrant signed by a judge underneath the door. If it's solely an ICE deportation warrant or the signed warrant does not have their correct name or address, they are not legally obligated to let officials into their homes.
First Published: February 1, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: February 3, 2025, 1:11 p.m.
