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Former Obama ICE Director Sarah Saldaña condemned President Donald Trump’s ICE enforcement on Friday, arguing it is comparable to a police state.
Amid Trump’s effort to accomplish his flagship campaign promise of mass deportations, many commentators have harkened back to his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was nicknamed the “Deporter-in-chief” during his presidency. While some argue that Obama’s deportations faced less pushback from local leaders during a comparatively more moderate time in American politics, one official argued that Trump’s is the outlier.
CNN played a clip of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem speaking about the targeted enforcement of deportation efforts focusing not only on specific persons, but asking for the identity verification of the people around them as well, saying this has been common practice.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked Saldaña, “What do you think? Is that standard practice for I.C.E. agents to ask someone to prove their identity and to show citizenship papers if they’re asked whether they’re citizens?”
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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a press conference to discuss ongoing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, at One World Trade Center in New York City, Jan. 8, 2026. (David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters)
Saldaña replied, “I know a little bit about this subject, and that is not the practice. That’s not part of the protocol. Of course, as was reported a little earlier, the goal of the Obama administration in apprehensions and removals was to make the community safer. So we were not sweeping neighborhoods and metropolitan areas in order to try to find people who might be in the country without authorization.”
“I always object to the term ‘raids,’ because the way I’m familiar with the process — and what we required — was targeted operations,” she continued. “I heard the secretary there say all their operations are targeted. I think it’s pretty clear that that is simply not the case, and requiring American citizens to show identification is a huge step forward and should bring pause to all of us.”
This policy, Saldaña said, is like something “close to a police state.”
“There’s concern I have that the United States decision last year, the Vasquez Perdomo case, has opened the door to this issue of identification, always been required,” Saldaña added. “Police officers can ask you to prove your identity, but that is very different from proving you’re a citizen of the United States, and the papers you carry typically are not going to reflect that. So it is putting an onus and getting very close to infringing on the civil rights of the ordinary citizen.”
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A federal law enforcement agent outside a home during a raid in south Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
She went on to argue that having thousands of agents engaged in such sweeps is an inordinate response to the challenge at hand. As it stands, many agents are facing crowds of agitators and are having to do crowd control while doing their immigration raids.
“Florida and Texas have far larger immigrant communities than the state of Minnesota. Again, the goal should be to ensure public safety, and this type of menacing presence does not accomplish that,” Saldaña argued.
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Protesters gather outside City Hall in Houston, Texas, on Jan. 10, 2026, for a demonstration against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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