Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who announced the results of ICE's Lone Star Mission in Texas on Oct. 29. Official DHS portrait by Tia Dufour (public domain).
ICE’s Lone Star Mission, a 10-day statewide enforcement operation in Texas, ended with 4,170 arrests, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in Dallas on Oct. 29, according to NBC DFW. By his own account, about four in ten of the people arrested had no criminal background and were picked up alongside the people agents had come for, a detail that says more about where interior enforcement is heading than the headline number does.
Mullin said more than 60 percent of those arrested had criminal backgrounds, including convictions for murder, sexual assault, drunken driving and immigrant smuggling. The other 40 percent he called “collateral” arrests. “They may not been the target, but they were in the vehicle, they were in a house, or wherever the warrant was served at,” he said, as quoted by NBC DFW. Based on the reported totals, that is roughly 1,670 people arrested without being the subject of the warrant.
The operation drew on all five ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field offices in Texas, whose directors from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Harlingen stood with Mullin, and on sheriff’s offices and police departments across the state. North Texas accounted for 879 arrests, about 21 percent of the total, a calculation from the reported figures.
What the Lone Star Mission numbers do and do not show
The figures released so far are aggregates. No breakdown of the 4,170 by conviction, pending charge, country or immigration status was included in the numbers reported from the announcement. That gap matters because “criminal background” can mean very different things. ICE’s own statistics generally separate people with criminal convictions from people with pending charges only, and the 60 percent figure, as reported, does not draw that line.
Mullin also offered a yardstick: Texas ERO officers took “more than 136,000 criminals into custody from October 2025 through Sept. 30, 2026,” NBC DFW reported. Spread over the year, that is about 373 a day. ERO, short for Enforcement and Removal Operations, is the branch of ICE whose officers arrest, detain and deport people from inside the U.S. The operation averaged 417 arrests a day. If the 136,000 counts every ERO arrest in Texas, the surge ran about 12 percent above the normal pace. If it counts only people with criminal records, as his wording suggests, the operation’s rate of criminal arrests, at least 250 a day, actually fell below the yearly average, and the extra volume came from collateral arrests. These are calculations from the figures Mullin gave; DHS has not published the breakdown that would show which reading is right.
Why collateral arrests carry weight in Texas
Collateral arrests are not new, but their share here is large. Federal law lets an immigration officer arrest someone without a warrant when the officer has reason to believe the person is removable and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. People swept up this way are processed for removal like anyone else; a clean record changes the equities a judge may weigh, not the government’s power to detain.
Detention is where Texas stands apart. Under a 2025 Board of Immigration Appeals precedent, people who entered without inspection are treated as applicants for admission subject to mandatory detention, and the full Fifth Circuit has now rejected the argument that due process requires a bond hearing anyway. For many of the roughly 1,670 collateral arrestees, that likely means no realistic path to release while their cases move, unless the Supreme Court’s pending bond case changes the rule. The general rules are in this guide to who qualifies for an immigration bond.
The term “applicant for admission” can sound like a favorable status, but it is the opposite. Before 1996, people who crossed the border without inspection often had more procedural protections than people who presented themselves at a port of entry, because they had technically “entered” the country. Congress closed that gap in the 1996 immigration overhaul by defining anyone present in the U.S. without having been lawfully admitted as an “applicant for admission,” treating them legally as if they were still standing at the border, no matter how long they have lived here. The goal was to make sure entering illegally carried no advantage. For decades, though, the government still allowed most people arrested in the interior to seek bond. The 2025 shift reads the label more aggressively: as requiring detention without a bond hearing. Many federal judges have rejected that reading, the appeals courts are split, and that question is what the Supreme Court has agreed to decide.
The operation also shows how far ICE now leans on local agencies. Mullin credited Texas law enforcement for the results, and partnerships of that kind, including the 287(g) program under which deputized local officers take on immigration duties, are now central to how ICE works. See how to tell if local police work with ICE and the program’s growth past 29,000 deputized officers.
More surges are coming
Mullin framed the operation as a model rather than a one-off. “So that type of target enforcing you’re going to continue to see,” he said. His case for the approach is that warrant-driven sweeps catch people with serious records; of those arrested, he said, “They should have never been on our streets.” The open question is who makes up the other 40 percent: recent arrivals, people with old removal orders, or long-settled workers and relatives with no record at all. The Texas figures cannot answer that, and the missing breakdown is what would let the public judge the operation on its own terms.
The legal fights to watch are the Supreme Court’s bond case and Texas courtrooms, where a state prosecution of an ICE agent in Houston is already testing how far local authority over federal officers reaches.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
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