“I don’t support them in other actions but… how do we determine who’s a targeted individual?”
These are Irvine’s Vice Mayor James Mai’s words in a discussion about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence in the United States. Irvine City Council members addressed ICE during a City Council meeting on Feb. 24, specifically under agenda item 5.3 (‘Consideration of a Request by Mayor Agran and Council members Liu and Martinez Franco to Discuss an Immigration Assistance Program for Irvine Residents and Employees’).
In this quote, Mai unknowingly highlights the exact root of the problem: the way ICE is conducting deportations means that we can’t determine who’s a targeted individual and who’s not. Without due process and the proper legal proceedings, the United States risks allowing ICE to deport legal US citizens.
During his turn to speak on ICE, Mai stated that he “fully support[s] them going after these people,” speaking about the criminals, traffickers, and brothels that he’s seen in his neighborhood. He explained that ICE operations in Irvine are “nothing new” and that ICE keeps his children and neighborhood safe.
Mai aims to prioritize public safety, especially in a community that is personal to him. However, Mai falsely assumes that ICE accurately identifies criminals. In fact, of the more than 68,000 individuals in the custody of ICE as of Feb. 7, 2026, approximately 73% have no criminal convictions. ICE arrests and detains without warrants and very little transparency in their detention centers. Without due process, ‘these people’ becomes increasingly hard to define.
ICE is portrayed to be solely detaining criminals who threaten US populations and security. However, as personal accounts surface, this is not nearly the case. In November, Olga Perez was arrested in front of her children in Florida and sent to an ICE detention center in Arizona, where she still waits for a hearing. 30 years ago, Olga fled from Guatemala as a teenager in order to escape anti-Indigenous violence. Olga has no criminal history and has a tax-paying business, as well as consistently paying her own taxes.
Although it is abundantly clear already, Olga does not fit the criminal migrant profile that ICE is supposedly targeting. The true question is: how many more people share Olga’s experience but not her news coverage?
ICE has also deported children. Non-criminal, legal US citizen children. On Jan. 11, five-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos was deported with her mother to Honduras, a country that Génesis had never stepped foot in. Despite the protests of her mother, Karen, telling ICE agents that Génesis was born in the US, both were taken into custody.
They were held for almost a week “in a hotel 80 miles from their home”, not a detention center. Génesis and her mother were deported without access to a lawyer or a hearing.
These are just two examples of the injustices that ICE commits in its arrests and deportations. Mai claims that he does not support ICE in deportations such as these but does in regards to the deportations in his neighborhood. He fails to acknowledge the fact that he cannot support an organization when it benefits him and simultaneously condemn it.
In the eyes of ICE, there is no distinction between the criminals that Mai wants out of his neighborhood and a five-year-old little girl standing next to her mother. If the system cannot reliably distinguish criminals, its entire justification collapses.
As Mai supposedly “always say[s], maybe it is right for them to be deported because they committed a crime in this country.” This statement blanketly assumes that guilt is already established and each individual has been taken through the entire legal process. Although Mai’s claim of ICE only deporting criminals has clearly already been addressed, public comments in the city council meeting served as an opportunity for the people to be heard.
One commenter gave their comment directly aimed at Mai, saying, “I cannot believe what came out of your mouth came out of your mouth… How could you say that?” Speaking in a way that doesn’t align with the polite norm of city council meetings, this commenter emphasized the significance of this issue and Mai’s response. Their bewilderment and pure shock embodies the frustration felt by people across the nation, with over 300 “ICE Out” protests estimated to have occurred in January.
Another commenter, a practicing immigration lawyer for more than 40 years, pointed out that “due process in the immigration law includes the right to request… relief from deportation.” Furthermore, a different commenter stated at the beginning of their comment that “the Constitution’s due process rights apply to everyone in this country, citizen or not.”
Some may argue that because ICE is targeting illegal US immigrants, they don’t have the right to due process. However, the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment clearly states that “no state may deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Nowhere does it make a distinction between a ‘person’ and a legal citizen. Pursuant to the Constitution, people in the United States are entitled to due process and hearings, which is crucial in requesting relief from deportation. Without it, ICE risks infringing on Constitutional rights.
Throughout the time for public comments, 5 commenters cited the statistic that “individuals without an attorney are more than three times as likely to be deported,” likely pulling from the fact that 62 percent of immigrants without a lawyer were ordered deported. This further highlights the significance that due process has on the outcome of ICE detainments.
Mai backs up his stance on ICE with personal anecdotes from his own neighborhood, claiming that “people can say they’re taking innocent people but the people of the neighborhood, in my neighborhood… we know what’s happening in these neighborhoods.” However, Mai’s personal observations from a single neighborhood does not by any means justify ICE’s actions across the nation. A public comment notes that “ICE just kidnaps whoever they please, creating internal administrative warrants, which are never signed by a judge.”
Despite Mai’s personal positive experience with ICE in his area, their arrests are ultimately completely at their internal discretion, not through judicial arrest warrants. There is no system to prevent enforcement from becoming unchecked power, leaving ICE free to arrest civilians however and whenever the organization pleases.
What does this mean for Irvine?
In Irvine, these concerns are not merely hypothetical anymore. Consistently ranked by the FBI the safest city of its size, ICE presence threatens both Irvine’s residents and reputation. ICE is reportedly leasing an office space on 2020 Main Street, although Michael Kent, Irvine’s Chief of Police, stated that there has not yet been official confirmation of the lease.
Mayor Larry Agran told the Orange County Register that ICE is “not very cooperative at all” and that the office leasing “suggests more than a temporary presence is coming here in Orange County and in Irvine.”
On Feb. 18, three women were taken from their workplace into custody by ICE. The three work at a printing business in Irvine, as confirmed by Irvine PD Chief Kent. Their arrests raised significant concern in Irvine communities, fearing that the mass extent of ICE raids in other areas will be coming to Irvine.
One resident at the meeting described a recent incident in which ICE agents “smashed the window of an Irvine employee’s car to violently arrest him.” This aligns with countless firsthand videos shared online of ICE using force to enter people’s cars and make arrests.
The conduct of ICE arrests creates a pattern: enforcement carried out without judicial oversight, leaving many residents worried about their rights and safety. That uncertainty directly challenges Vice Mayor Mai’s premise that ICE’s enforcement is solely limited to “targeted individuals.”
In reality, when due process is inconsistent or even completely ignored, the distinction between ‘targeted criminal’ and ‘ordinary resident’ becomes blurry and nearly impossible to draw.
For Irvine, a city where nearly 40% of its residents are foreign-born, the consequences are felt immediately. Uncertainty surrounds ICE and its effects shape how safe people feel going to work, sending their children to school, or even going to school themselves. When residents fear that immigration enforcement may appear without warrants, clear justification, or access to legal representation, that fear extends to the entire community.
It goes without saying, but any government, national or local, should understand that a fearful community is not one they want to create. This is exactly where local leadership matters. While the city cannot directly control federal immigration policies, it can shape how residents view and experience it.
By framing ICE as an organization that only removes criminals, leaders misrepresent the uncertainty and legal ambiguity questions that residents have raised. As vice mayor, Mai’s words carry weight, not just as an opinion, but as a signal of how the city understands and responds to enforcement within its own borders.
Rather than assuming that their personal experiences apply to the rest of the community, local leaders should acknowledge the fact that ICE is doing harm to American society. Rather than telling the public that we have no power over the federal government, government officials should emphasize the importance of the right to protest, protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Ultimately, the question is not whether or not Irvine supports public safety, because it does. The question is whether that safety is defined solely by enforcement, or by the consistent application of legal protections. Without due process, enforcement does not simply remove threats, it introduces unrest.
In a city as diverse as Irvine, that unrest is not confined to isolated incidents: it becomes a condition that shapes everyday life.
