LAS VEGAS — Nearly six months after President Donald Trump took office under a sweeping campaign promise that his administration would launch “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America,” the federal government has been mum about how his immigration enforcement is playing out in Southern Nevada.

In late April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons reported 66,463 immigration arrests and 65,682 deportations, according to a news release highlighting Trump’s first 100 days of his second term.

Weeks later, however, the Trump administration hasn’t offered concrete data about how those numbers break down regionally, and hasn’t confirmed reports of enforcement operations in Las Vegas after they occurred.

And it hasn’t explained how the city of Las Vegas ended up on a list in which the Department of Homeland Security classified it as a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants, a designation that threatens the withholding of federal funds.

This is occurring amid reports from local advocacy groups about federal agents conducting traffic stops and arresting migrants at homes, businesses and outside Las Vegas Immigration Court.

The operations have solely been highlighted by advocacy groups like UNLV’s Immigration Clinic.

The recent detainment of at least six asylum-seekers outside the downtown immigration court took place moments after the government sought to dismiss the cases, the group said.

“The detained men had followed the rules and attended their scheduled court hearings,” it said. “However, the result was that they (were) left in shackles, in a van, surrounded by armed government agents.”

The Department of Justice, which administers the court, referred comment about that operation to the DHS, which oversees ICE.

“The Department of Homeland Security is committed to transparency,” DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a statement. “Often due to operational security and risks of undermining our intelligence, we cannot comment on ongoing or future enforcement operations.”

Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach, a local conservative organization, said illegal immigration has been an issue for a half-century and that he wishes laws were enacted by Congress instead of executive orders.

“I think (Trump’s) been very transparent,” Muth said. “I don’t think anybody is very surprised that he’s doing what he said he was going to do.”

He said Trump and federal agencies hold regular press conferences.

“I’m happy that he’s finally enforcing the law,” he said. “If you don’t like the law, change it.”

‘Major lack of transparency’

Immigration attorneys told the Review-Journal that they are struggling to touch base with immigration authorities to get information about their clients.

The breakdown in communication began shortly before Trump was re-elected, said Alissa Cooley Yonesawa, managing attorney for UNLV’s Immigration Clinic.

That’s when attorneys began receiving a “cold shoulder” treatment from federal attorneys and agents, she said.

Previously, the regional ICE office would offer timely responses from immigration attorneys’ emails inquiring about their clients, Cooley Yonesawa said.

“It wasn’t always what we wanted to hear and they weren’t always super nice about it, but they would respond,” she said.

Shortly before Trump took the oath of office, “they started telling us that we’re trying to communicate too much and that we’re basically bothering them, and we need to stop,” she added. “Then they stopped responding altogether.”

Freedom of Information Act records requests have been denied and appeals have been ignored even when the lawyers have partial records that prove the documentation exists, Cooley Yonesawa said.

Attorney Hardeep “Dee” Sull said that recently immigration authorities initially declined to give her a client’s “A-number,” also known as an “alien registration number.”

Sull eventually obtained the information. But “a delay is a delay: It matters to a client, it matters to our cases, it matters to an immigration judge.”

ICE would previously tell legal counsel when their clients were taken in and where they were being held “almost immediately,” according to attorney Meesha Moulton.

She said that allowed timely legal consultations and visits from clients’ families.

For her latest case, Moulton said that it was her client’s wife who let her know he was picked up, which is now a common scenario.

“There’s this major lack of transparency that’s directly violating these individuals’ due process and that whole fair and legal access,” Moulton said.

Withholding that critical information, she added, “hinders the ability that we have to be able to properly represent them.”

Little ‘official’ information

ICE spokespeople did not provide recent data about deportations and arrests when requested, instead pointing to a DHS database that outlines regional enforcement figures. But it hasn’t been updated since the end of 2024, even while the website say it’s adjusted on a quarterly basis.

“We get our best information about enforcement operations directly from the community, from direct service providers, and from grassroots organizers,” West Juhl, American Civil Liberties of Nevada campaign director, wrote in a statement.

Juhl added: “It has been challenging that the agency has failed to confirm some recent surges for the mainstream media, because we can sound the alarm when we hear operations are heating up in Nevada neighborhoods, but we can’t give ‘official’ reports in the ways that corporate news outlets typically want.”

After the State Department revoked visas of seven international UNLV students, the department referenced public remarks from spokesperson Tammy Bruce, who cited privacy, saying that “we’ve never gone into details of the visa process.”

“What we can tell you is that the department revokes visas every day in order to secure our borders and to keep our community safe, and we’ll continue to do so,” Bruce said.

UNLV, which said it had no “direct communication” with the federal government, later announced that the visas had been restored.

On social media, DHS agencies have provided tidbits about immigration enforcement.

FBI Las Vegas has posted photos of federal agents out in the field, writing that the agency was assisting with immigration enforcement.

ICE’s Salt Lake City field office, a regional satellite that encompasses Nevada, sporadically highlights selective cases of individual migrants with purported criminal records arrested in the Las Vegas Valley.

The office of the U.S. attorney in Nevada has started issuing press releases of illegal re-entry convictions, something it didn’t do traditionally during the first Trump administration or under former President Joe Biden.

National polls show that Trump’s immigration policies remain among his most popular. Half of respondents surveyed by Marquette Law School in May said they supported his administration’s work around immigration and 56% said they approved of his border policies.

‘Not a sanctuary’

The recent DHS designation of the city of Las Vegas as one of hundreds of migrant sanctuaries across the U.S. startled Nevada elected officials.

Prior to the announcement, Mayor Shelley Berkley said the city was not a sanctuary, later describing the designation as a “total surprise.”

Gov. Joe Lombardo echoed the city, and Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill told the Review-Journal that “I was surprised as much as anyone else.”

The list, compiled through a Trump executive order, was quietly removed days later with no explanation. It hasn’t been republished.

As of Thursday, “We’ve had no other communications from DHS,” a city spokesperson told the Review-Journal.

Asked about how Las Vegas ended up on the list, DHS only provided a boilerplate response that didn’t address the question, adding that the list can be changed “at any time.”

“I stand fully behind Governor Lombardo, Mayor Berkley, and Sheriff McMahill,” wrote U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, in a statement to the Review-Journal. “We’re in the process of getting some answers from Homeland regarding the facts and rationale behind recent decisions.”

Amodei, who chairs the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, added: “We expect to have more answers shortly.”

Local immigration enforcement collaboration

A day after Las Vegas was tagged as a sanctuary, Sheriff Kevin McMahill’s Metropolitan Police Department signed onto a formal, jail-based 287(g) agreement with ICE.

The contract will allow officers at the Clark County Detention Center to serve warrants for wanted and undocumented migrants booked on certain crimes for an extended period of time, giving ICE up to 48 hours to pick them up when they’re due to be released.

McMahill said the decision had been in the works for weeks. He previously noted that Metro relied on about $30 million in federal dollars that fund programs and personnel.

Metro and the city of Las Vegas already collaborated with ICE, at least informally. The city said that it flagged nearly 300 municipal jail inmates to ICE from Jan. 1 through May, compared with just two people during the same time period in 2024.

A spokesperson said the increase was due to the Laken Riley Act, which expanded the number of alleged offenses that lead to referral.

McMahill said this week that 350 inmates in the Clark County Detention Center had been flagged for ICE, adding that the number fluctuates because the jail averages 250 daily bookings overall.

Henderson Police contracts its jail with ICE to hold federal inmates, but the city said it wasn’t entering into a formal 287(g) agreement.

The department said it had honored 25 ICE detainers for people it has arrested this year through May, and that ICE had booked 583 people at the jail during the same time period. Henderson police said it didn’t track those numbers in 2024.

Cooley Yonesawa and Sull acknowledged that the immigration system was broken and backlogged long before Trump was re-elected but said that his policies are only worsening it.

The administration is making “big promises” about deportation goals that are unachievable “unless you start violating people’s rights,” Cooley Yonesawa said.

She said 287(g) agreements exposes local jurisdictions to costly lawsuits under Fourth Amendment claims that guarantee protections against search and seizure.

Sull said she treats her immigration cases like she would a death penalty trial. She says she’s seen successes by taking complaints about lack of transparency up the chain of command.

“The agencies are not cooperating, unfortunately,” Sull said. “They make it extremely difficult to represent clients, and that’s done by design.”

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