ICE is arresting immigrants on Long Island by surveilling parking lots and running license plates

Luis, a 25-year-old tile installer, sat in his black Jeep Cherokee outside a job at the Tanger Outlets in Deer Park, looking for a tool. Unknown to him, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents watched from the parking lot.

In a span of 20 minutes on a late February morning — before Luis could even finish his break — the officers staking him out from two unmarked sedans had run his Jeep’s Virginia plates, learned he was an Ecuadorian citizen, obtained a warrant and arrested him, court records show. He said they didn’t give him a chance to explain that he had a valid work permit and federal status shielding him from deportation.

"They ... put the handcuffs on me and left everything there — the keys, the car, everything," Luis said in Spanish during a recent interview from his attorney’s Queens office, after a judge freed him. Newsday is not publishing Luis’ last name to protect his privacy as his immigration case continues. "They didn’t verify anything. They just said, ‘You’re illegal.’"

ICE has arrested more than 2,000 people on Long Island since the start of the second Trump administration, and almost none have come from the type of attention-grabbing sweeps that have sparked unrest around the country. Instead, ICE is leveraging the region’s prevailing car culture, turning strip mall parking lots, side streets and highways into a pillar of its surveillance operation, a Newsday investigation found.

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To understand the agency’s tactics, reporters reviewed roughly 400 habeas corpus petitions, which challenge immigrant detentions, and the government’s responses filed in the U.S. Eastern District of New York court between Jan. 20, 2025, and June 30, 2026.

At least 84 of those cases involved ICE arresting immigrants who were using a car on Long Island, including during traffic stops, in parking lots and following crashes.

In sworn statements and court transcripts, agents repeatedly describe running out-of-state license plates of cars to get the registrant’s name and then putting that name into federal immigration databases to determine the person’s legal status in the country. The traffic stops that often result are a tactic that has come under new and heightened national scrutiny.

Following federal agents killing immigrants in cars in Texas and Maine earlier this month — and a new wave of anti-ICE protests — the Department of Homeland Security July 14  ordered the agency to temporarily halt most traffic stops. But less than a day later, President Donald Trump criticized the directive, saying on social media that ICE "cannot give up" one of the agency’s "most important and effective crime fighting tools."

ICE’s strategy on Long Island shows how it has largely operated outside of coordinated raids and targeted home visits, both more likely to generate protests and bystander video, yet still captured hundreds of unaware immigrants going about their daily routine, according to immigration attorneys.

They alleged ICE checking license plate information and car registrations amounted to racial profiling and highlighted the agency’s increasingly widespread and covert surveillance network.

At his confirmation hearing in mid-March, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin struck a more conciliatory tone than his predecessor, Kristi Noem, whose tenure was marked by ICE agents fatally shooting two U.S. citizens protesting sweeps in Minneapolis. Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, said the agency would continue to carry out Trump’s immigration policies but his goal was to ensure the agency wasn’t the "lead story every single day."

But the scale of ICE’s surveillance on Long Island calls into question even the agency's lower-profile tactics, according to Reuben Kerben, Luis’ Queens-based attorney.

"It definitely — as someone who lives on Long Island — worries me, troubles me," Kerben said. "Like, what else is being done that we’re not really privy to as the public?"

As ICE arrests surge nationwide, their discreet approach here could offer a blueprint on how to carry out arrests with less risk of immediate public awareness.

A spokesperson for the agency said in an emailed statement ICE does not have access to New York Department of Motor Vehicles databases and can’t use them to execute arrests. The agency did not answer questions over whether it seeks permission from businesses to conduct surveillance operations in their parking lots.

Not all arrested immigrants challenge their detentions in court, meaning the true number of traffic-stop arrests is likely higher than the 84 identified by Newsday. But the lawsuits provide one of the largest windows into ICE’s Long Island enforcement actions, since the agency does not release detailed records of how it makes arrests.

Outside of traffic stops, the petitions show ICE has made multiple local arrests by targeting people outside of scheduled interviews at immigration offices, walking to and from home or businesses, at probation check-ins or after they were arrested by police.

Newsday’s investigation also uncovered some of the first publicly known depositions from arresting ICE agents, in which they documented running license plates through government databases to identify registered owners. New York bars agencies that largely enforce immigration law from accessing state DMV records, and the depositions don’t indicate whether ICE purposefully targeted vehicles with out-of-state plates so they could legally use other databases.

An ICE officer describes the surveillance they did on Luis in a Deer Park parking lot, and how quickly they were able to identify him, obtain a warrant and arrest him. Luis had a Virginia license plate at the time of his arrest.

Jess D’Amelia, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, said the tactics amounted to "indiscriminate targeting," adding the Trump administration should focus on keeping "violent offenders accountable and stop wasting critical resources trying to separate families and cause harm to our communities."

"There’s no real way of realizing who someone is from what comes back with their car’s registration outside of their name," Murad Awawdeh, the head of the New York Immigration Coalition, a statewide advocacy group, said in an interview. "None of this has been about going after the worst of the worst, as Donald Trump has said."

In about one-third of cases Newsday found and reviewed, agents said they arrested motorists even after realizing they were not the people they were seeking. Agents sometimes said they stopped the drivers because they or their passengers resembled the intended target.

In Houston earlier this month, ICE officials said the man shot and killed while driving a van was not the intended target of the arrest.

‘Even more under the radar’

Luis said he has a New York driver's license, but at the time of his arrest was driving the Jeep with out-of-state plates.

New York lawmakers passed a law in 2019, during Trump’s first term, allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses while limiting immigration authorities’ access to DMV records. To access records, federal immigration officials must have a court order or a judicial warrant signed by a judge for a specific person, who would be notified.

Like Luis, three men stopped by ICE while driving in Bethpage early this year were in a car with Virginia plates. After agents ran a check on the car, they learned its registered owner was a citizen of El Salvador with a 2006 removal order and arrested the men, court records show.

Edward Cuccia, the Manhattan-based attorney for two of the men, contrasted ICE operations on Long Island to places like New York City, where a raid on Canal Street in October drew scores of protesters who recorded and swarmed immigration officials.

"ICE operates with a great deal more freedom" on Long Island, Cuccia said.

In dozens of court records, ICE agents describe how they run license plate information while on the road, or sitting in parking lots of big-box stores, like Walmart, Target and Home Depot, often in communities with large Latino populations.

Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream has been one of the more frequent spots for ICE surveillance, according to Newsday’s review, with at least six people arrested following plate checks there between mid-February and early March. One was making an Instacart delivery.

In response to Newsday, several retailers with stores where arrests took place said they had no agreement with ICE andeither they weren’t notified about agents’ presence in their parking lots, or the lots were owned by other companies. Some companies said they don’t have control over who uses their lots and cannot interfere with law enforcement activities.

Green Acres didn’t respond to a request for comment and a representative of Tanger, where Luis was arrested, declined to comment.

License plate checks accounted for about one-quarter of the motorist arrests ICE made, Newsday found.

"People are afraid to go out and conduct their daily activities," said Ivan Larios, the manager of organizing and strategy for Long Island at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Families are "becoming isolated" and "even afraid of leaving their homes" because there are reports and recordings of ICE agents sitting in parking lots, he said.

Questions of legality

ICE stops have largely been concentrated in Brentwood, Freeport, Hempstead and Uniondale — Long Island communities with sizable Latino populations.

"They are stopping anybody that looks Latino," Larios said.

In one case, ICE officers in February stopped a 27-year-old Honduran man driving a construction van in Central Islip, which is almost two-thirds Hispanic or Latino. They approached with firearms drawn and banged on the vehicle’s window, according to the petition challenging his detention. The man was "terrified," according to his account filed in court. Before he could open the door, agents shattered the window, he said, pulled him from the vehicle and forced him to the ground before arresting him. Two days later, a federal judge ordered his release.

Ify Chikezie, a staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the practice of running plates based on a driver’s appearance unlawful.

It "truly amounts to racial profiling if you’re looking at who is getting stopped, whose plates they are running and who is getting approached," Chikezie said.

Last September, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion in a case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in California that stated race could be a factor when making arrests. ICE, both locally and nationwide, has likely used this as its justification, immigration attorney Sergey Risko said.

"Latinos are an easy target," Risko said, referring to the opinion.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that favors limited immigration, said ICE is carrying out its responsibilities by surveilling parking lots and carrying out traffic stops.

"Like any law enforcement department anywhere in the country, they look for violators in places where they are most likely to be found and utilize the tools that are available to them to identify people who are subject to enforcement," said Ira Mehlman, FAIR’s media director. "That appears to be precisely what ICE is doing on Long Island."

Immigration arrests on Long Island reached a historic high at the start of the year and continued steadily, according to the most recently available arrest data, from October through early March. The arrests make up a growing share of detentions by ICE in the metropolitan area.

Since last fall, arrests on Long Island make up more than half of the arrests in the region, although roughly 15% of New York’s undocumented immigrants call Long Island home.

ICE has had the cooperation of the Nassau County Police Department, which entered into a 287(g) agreement with the federal agency, permitting ICE to deputize police to carry out immigration enforcement actions and locate persons suspected of being in the country illegally. In at least five cases identified by Newsday from court records, county police officers conducted traffic stops or responded to crashes and then called ICE to verify the immigration status of the drivers. ICE officers then arrived at the scenes and arrested the motorists.

Afraid to travel

ICE’s approach in New York prompted a class-action lawsuit in April alleging federal agents infringe on immigrants’ constitutional rights during the types of arrests they’re carrying out by using racial profiling to make warrantless arrests.

In filings for several habeas corpus cases, ICE claims to have produced a warrant after an arrest. In one such filing, an officer wrote that detainees "are regularly served with an arrest warrant during processing as opposed to at the scene of the arrest to protect the arresting officers’ safety."

In at least three instances, ICE officers attested in court records an acting supervisory detention and deportation officer completed and signed a warrant only after an ICE or Customs and Border Protection officer ran a records check on a vehicle’s license plate to learn the identity and immigration status of the vehicle’s registered owner.

A measure included in this year’s state budget gives people the right to sue if federal agents violate their constitutional rights.

Larios, of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the group has been hosting know-your-rights presentations across the region "so that at least the community are aware of their rights in case ICE shows up."

He said because many immigrants are afraid to travel to meeting places, organizers are distributing information about legal rights through both online content and printed cards.

"We have to get to them," Larios said, "and that’s why we have to be creative and find ways of relaying the information directly to the community members."

Some advocates urge immigrants who are stopped to not voluntarily provide ICE with any information.

Carolyn Corrado, a partner at Hempstead-based immigration firm Jadeja-Cimone, however, said fear of force is a factor in compliance. One of her clients, a Honduran man, was stopped at the AutoZone in Hempstead in January, and said the arresting officers "pointed a gun at his head, didn’t explain anything to him, [and] took him into custody," according to a court transcript.

A federal judge ordered the client’s release three days after the arrest.

"It’s easy for us to sit here and say, ‘Don’t say anything,’ " Corrado said. "But in the moment, I think there are frequently practical considerations, too. One is [being] afraid."

Luis, the 25-year-old from Ecuador, said he was in shock when six ICE agents surrounded him.

"The fear didn’t come right away," he said in Spanish. "At that moment ... I couldn’t really process what was happening. At that moment what I felt was that I hadn’t achieved my dream and if they deported me, where would I go? I left my country because of threats."

Months later, Luis said he’s still a little nervous to drive knowing that ICE is conducting traffic stops. Rather than taking on construction work through a union, he’s largely working for himself now, doing smaller tiling jobs.

"For some reason, God gave me another chance to be here," he said. "I think all immigrants feel like we’re criminals, and you never know at what moment you will fall, or what moment you could be in a situation like this. There’s always worry for your family because you never know."