The Trump administration is scrambling to correct the record after The Daily Wire reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers across the country were ordered to stop arresting illegal immigrants without criminal records.
The news of the verbal orders set off a political firestorm. Within hours, ICE gave officers the green light to continue nabbing illegal immigrants without criminal convictions or charges.
A White House official also confirmed that some ICE officers received the verbal guidance to stop arresting non-criminals.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an X post Saturday evening that reports of the ICE guidance were “false” and that “no one is off the table” for arrests.
The agency went on to say that ICE has commenced “a nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities” to target “criminal illegal aliens — many released from jails by sanctuary politicians — including murderers, rapists, child predators, and gang members.”
Scott Mechkowski, a former ICE New York field office deputy director, said an official within the Department of Homeland Security likely bungled orders, leading to the apparent miscommunication.
“This was not a policy change, and anyone reporting it that way is getting it wrong,” Mechkowski said. “Somebody in communications pushed out guidance without understanding how ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] actually operates, and it got garbled on the way to the field.”
The retired ICE official explained that the agency intended to have officers make the arrests of criminals a “priority” and did not intend to put a stop to the arrests of illegal immigrants lacking rap sheets.
“Here’s how it works … our state and local partners do their jobs every day,” Mechkowski said. “If they encounter an illegal alien, that person gets processed. That never stopped.”
“Separately, ICE officers carry dockets, and a lot of those files are criminal aliens. The guidance was meant to tell those officers to work their criminal cases first. Prioritize, not quit. There’s a big difference, and whoever wrote it didn’t grasp that. It was corrected within a day,” he said.
John Sandweg, who served as the acting ICE director for the Obama administration, echoed that the sweeping directive could have been a result of a miscommunication.
“A lot of times when the guidance is kicked out to the field, there’s a desire within ICE to simplify it and make it as unambiguous as possible … maybe the message was, ‘hey, we need to make sure we’re really focusing as well on the criminal population’ and somehow by the time it ends up down in the field, that comes out to don’t touch any non-criminals,” Sandweg said.
The guidance seemed to mimic a memo that ICE received under the Biden administration to prioritize the arrests of egregious criminal illegal immigrants, Alex Howard, a Biden DHS spokesman, said.
“The principle of the [Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas memo was simple: ICE has broader legal authority than it has resources, so you prioritize the highest-risk cases,” Howard said. “The policies aren’t identical, but it’s striking that this administration appears to have briefly moved toward that same concept before quickly reaffirming broader enforcement after the guidance became public and drew Republican pushback.”
The Department of Homeland Security is now trying to do damage control because “there’s an election in 36 days,” Howard said.
Sandweg also pointed to the upcoming midterm election, saying the Trump administration is trying to best respond to the debacle by threading a delicate needle.
“Obviously, we’re in a midterm cycle. It certainly sounds to me that there’s some elements probably concerned about the impact of immigration enforcement right now, in terms of widespread arrests of non-criminal targets right now,” Sandweg said.
“Maybe you have some members of Congress who are in tough races calling and saying ‘hey, this is hurting me.’ But at the same time, the administration doesn’t want to be seen as abandoning aggressive immigration enforcement or walking anything back,” he said.
Luis Miranda, a former DHS official, dismissed claims that the orders were a result of a miscommunication.
“There was already reporting that ICE has been quietly having to fire unqualified hires, and failed to account for long-term costs in a massive detention center shopping spree that wasted tens of millions of dollars on facilities they won’t use,” Miranda, who currently works as a political strategist, said.
“So this isn’t a communication breakdown; it’s likely a conflict between career law enforcement trying to focus resources and a White House’s political lackeys wanting to treat everything like a reality television circus,” he added.
The debacle was reminiscent of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s decision to briefly halt ICE traffic stops over the summer after two fatal shootings in Maine and Texas.
When President Donald Trump got word of that change, he quickly ordered the restoration of traffic stops.
Mary Margaret Olohan contributed to this report.
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