An ICE immigration detainer is a written request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asking a jail, prison, or police agency that already has someone in custody to: (1) notify ICE before releasing the person, and (2) hold the person for up to 48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be released so ICE has time to take them into federal custody.
Legally, the detainer itself does not create a new criminal charge. It is an administrative immigration request. Under federal regulation, it authorizes a brief extra hold (up to 48 hours) so ICE can assume custody, but multiple federal courts have held that compliance is voluntary and that local agencies can be sued if they keep someone locked up without their own legal authority or probable cause. In practice, honoring a detainer means the person may be held those extra hours and then turned over to ICE instead of being released.
Yes. Because immigration detainers are classified as requests, not commands, state and local officials 0including governors, mayors, sheriffs, and jail administrators re not legally required under federal law to honor them.
Federal regulation says a detainer is a notice that DHS "seeks custody" and a request that the agency maintain custody up to 48 hours, but courts have held this does not make compliance mandatory. The Third Circuit in Galarza v. Szalczyk ruled that ICE detainers are "non-binding requests" and that local governments may be liable for unlawfully holding people solely on a detainer. Other courts (e.g., Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas County) have similarly found local compliance is voluntary and can violate the Fourth Amendment if not backed by independent legal authority.
In Minnesota specifically, a 2025 formal opinion from the Minnesota Attorney General concludes that state law does not authorize state or local officials to hold or arrest someone based only on an ICE detainer and that doing so can expose agencies to civil liability. That opinion, while not a statute, is binding guidance on Minnesota executive-branch agencies and strongly discourages sheriffs or other officials from honoring detainers without a judicial warrant or other state-law authority.
There is no formal legal definition of "criminal illegal alien" in the press release, and DHS/ICE uses similar terms differently in different contexts.
In this release, DHS labels all six noncitizens it lists as "criminal illegal aliens" even though four are described only as charged with crimes and two are described as convicted. That shows DHS here is using the phrase politically to cover people who are merely accused as well as those already convicted.
By contrast, in DHS enforcement statistics, agencies define "criminal aliens" or "criminal noncitizens" more narrowly as noncitizens who have been convicted of at least one criminal offense before being apprehended. For example, U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that "the term 'criminal aliens' refers to individuals who have been convicted of one or more crimes" and explicitly ties the category to prior convictions.
The press release does not explain how DHS arrived at the numbers "more than 1,360" in custody and "nearly 470" released, nor does it cite a public dataset.
What can be inferred:
Without additional documentation from DHS or ICE, the exact methodology and data source for these counts are not publicly verifiable.
No. The individuals named in the DHS release are a mix of people convicted of crimes and people only charged (accused) at the time of the press release:
Thus, DHS is publicly labeling some people as "criminal illegal aliens" based only on charges, not court convictions.
Tricia McLaughlin is the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
According to DHS, in this role she:
Her authority is over communications and public affairs, not over day-to-day immigration enforcement operations (which are carried out by ICE, CBP, and other DHS components). However, as a Senate-confirmed senior official, she speaks officially for the department and shapes how DHS presents immigration enforcement policies to the public.
When a jail, prison, or police department honors an ICE detainer, the typical sequence is:
Honoring a detainer therefore leads to a transfer into federal immigration custody, but it does not by itself guarantee immediate deportation; removal still requires lawful process and, in most cases, an order from an immigration judge.