Somebody sent a stand-down order into ICE field offices over the weekend. Then the Department of Homeland Security called the whole thing “false.” Then the President of the United States had to get on the phone and kill it.
That is not a rumor mill. That is the sequence.
The Daily Wire’s Jennie Taer reported Saturday that ICE officers across the country had been told to stop arresting illegal aliens who lack criminal convictions or pending charges. Final deportation orders would not be enough. “Collateral arrests” were out too. If agents found a criminal target sitting next to other illegal aliens, they were to take only the named target and leave the rest.
Officers who received it were not confused about what they heard. One told Taer the timing looked political. “We believe it has something to do with the midterms coming up,” the source said. “They’re trying to calm things down before the elections.” Another predicted the obvious. “We’ll see the arrest numbers go down.”
A third source put it in language that does not need a press shop. “I hope Trump finds out about this sh*t and puts an end to it.”
He did.
The Guidance Went Out. Then It Died.
DHS answered first with a midnight denial. “This is false. No one is off the table,” the department posted. “We will continue to arrest any and all illegal aliens that come into our path. Anyone in our country illegally will be arrested and deported.” The same statement advertised a nationwide public-safety surge in sanctuary cities aimed at murderers, rapists, child predators, and gang members released by sanctuary politicians.
The denial was half a truth. The surge may be real. The stand-down was also real.
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin spent Sunday on the phone with President Trump and nine ICE and DHS sources. His report matches the officers Taer found and then goes further.
Yes, this verbal guidance did go out to ICE offices across the country last night. I’ve spoken with ICE agents who received it and were shocked and frustrated by it. It’s unclear who it started with. However, I’m told it’s erroneous, was some type of “miscommunication” during conversations about prioritizing “worst first,” and there is no change in immigration enforcement policy.
Trump told Melugin that anyone in the country illegally remains “on the table” for arrest and deportation. New guidance went back out to field offices the same night. Collateral arrests of illegal aliens without extra criminal history will continue. ICE sources confirmed they received the correction.
“I’m not really sure what happened here,” Melugin wrote. “But everyone is on the same page, including President Trump, in telling me that his immigration enforcement agenda isn’t scaling back.”
Good. Now find the person who sent the first message.
Worst First Is Not a License to Look Away
Prioritizing murderers and gang members is not the scandal. Every serious enforcement operation starts with the worst cases. The scandal is the slide from “worst first” into “everybody else later, maybe never.” That is how Biden-era ICE lived. Protected areas. Sensitive locations. Catch-and-release. A quiet rule that illegal presence did not count until the alien added a second crime on American soil.
Illegal entry is already a federal offense. Illegal reentry after removal is a felony. A final order of removal is not a suggestion. Treating those facts as “non-criminal” is a word game that only works in a newsroom. The family that loses a child to a man who “only” had a deportation order does not care about the adjective.
Scripture does not treat delayed judgment as mercy. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” That is Ecclesiastes 8:11, and it describes every sanctuary jail that dumps a removable alien back onto the street.
This also is not the first time the field has been yanked one way and then yanked back. In July, after fatal ICE encounters in Texas and Maine that began as vehicle stops, senior officials paused most traffic stops. Trump reversed it within a day and called the traffic stop one of ICE’s most important crime-fighting tools.
Last week DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced ICE would not run worksite operations in Kansas and would stick to “heinous criminals” and aliens with final orders. The White House has also pulled Mullin’s pick to run ICE. Pattern, not coincidence.
Miscommunication Is a Personnel Problem
Verbal guidance that reaches offices nationwide is not a stray email. Somebody translated a talking point about “worst first” into an operational limit and sent it down the chain. Officers heard it. They were shocked. Then the public-affairs shop called the reporting false before the president cleaned it up.
That sequence should embarrass anyone who still pretends the only threat to deportations is a district judge. The threat can sit inside the building. It can wear a title. It can decide, five weeks before a midterm, that the optics of collateral arrests are more dangerous than the aliens being left behind.
Trump’s correction is the right policy. Anyone here illegally stays on the table. Collateral arrests continue. The sanctuary surge can hunt the worst cases without inventing a protected class of “non-criminal” illegal aliens.
The remaining question is the one Melugin could not answer. Who started it? Until that name is public, every ICE officer in the field has to wonder which phone call is real policy and which one is a weekend experiment that lasts until Fox News dials the Oval Office.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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