Sometime overnight on September 27th, verbal orders went out to ICE offices across the country telling agents to stop arresting illegal immigrants who didn't have criminal charges or convictions. By the next morning, those orders were rescinded. In between, the entire conservative media ecosystem caught fire — and for once, the panic was justified.
Per officers within ICE, officers had received instructions to limit arrests to individuals with criminal records and to halt so-called "collateral" arrests — the practice of picking up illegal immigrants encountered during other enforcement operations. Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin confirmed it independently, telling his audience, "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." Former Border Patrol agent J.J. Carrell went further, calling it a nationwide "stand down."
DHS responded the same day with a flat denial on its official account: "This is FALSE. No one is off the table. We will continue to arrest any and all illegal aliens."
That's a strong statement. It also doesn't explain how the guidance got out in the first place.
Vice President JD Vance didn't deny that the orders were given. What he did was explain what they meant — and where the administration actually stands. "Nobody who has come into the United States illegally should remain in the United States," Vance said. "That remains our policy."
On the guidance itself, Vance explained where the confusion likely came from: resource prioritization. "If you, let's say, have a DHS agent and that guy can deport one person that day, he can go and deport a violent criminal or person who hasn't committed a violent crime — of course, we're going to prioritize the violent criminals," he said. "That's about prioritizing fundamentally limited resources."
The administration has deported north of 3 million people in 18 months. ICE has hired roughly 12,000 new officers and agents, more than doubling its workforce. Congress has approved nearly $75 billion in additional funding. Those aren't the numbers of an operation that's winding down. Those are the numbers of an operation that outgrew its internal communications.
Which is exactly where DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin finds himself under the microscope. Mullin had already drawn conservative criticism for earlier decisions — restricting ICE vehicle stops, pulling back on worksite enforcement operations in Kansas. Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer had both publicly questioned his commitment to the mission. The overnight guidance, whether it was a "miscommunication" or a trial balloon that got shot down in four hours, landed on a secretary whose credibility with the base was already thin.
President Trump settled it personally on September 27th, confirming to Melugin that anyone in the country illegally remains "on the table" for arrest and deportation. By September 28th, new guidance reaffirming existing enforcement policy had gone out to every ICE field office.
Vance pointed to the leak itself as part of the problem — internal policy discussions getting pulled out of context and handed to reporters before the ink is dry. That's a fair complaint when the policy in question survived less than a business day. It's a less compelling one when the agents receiving the orders were, by multiple accounts, "shocked and frustrated" enough to start making phone calls immediately.
The administration inherited somewhere around 10 million illegal entries from the Biden years, on top of an estimated 15 to 20 million already in the country. Three million deportations in 18 months is an unprecedented pace. Twelve thousand new agents is a massive hiring surge. But the gap between 3 million removed and 25-plus million remaining is the kind of math that makes a four-hour guidance wobble feel bigger than it was.
The guidance is dead. The policy is unchanged. The deportation machine is running at a pace no prior administration has matched.
Three million in eighteen months, and the agents who flagged the bad orders are the reason it stayed that way.