Immigration hawks erupted after ICE briefly told field offices to ease off arrests of illegal immigrants without criminal records, a mix-up the White House scrambled to reverse within hours.
Verbal guidance went out to some Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices directing a pullback on arrests of illegal immigrants who lacked criminal histories. Officials later called the directive a misunderstanding, not a formal policy shift, and rescinded it within hours while sending fresh instructions that reaffirmed no change in enforcement.
Fox News reported that a source familiar with the matter said the order “definitely went out,” described it as miscommunication that did not come from the top, and said the person responsible would likely face a reprimand. The episode still lit up immigration hardliners who want consistent interior enforcement, not mixed signals.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis pushed back hard on the idea that anyone had been carved out of removal efforts.
"No one is off the table."
Bis also said DHS “continues to deliver results for the American people including the most secure border in history and three straight months of a record number of ICE arrests.” After a Wire report on the guidance, DHS answered in similar terms: “this is false. No one is off the table.”
Mike Howell, leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition and president of The Oversight Project, argued public pressure forced the walk-back and said the mess fit a wider pattern of confused DHS messaging.
"[The guidance] was walked back, allegedly, which is great, and I think it was in large part walked back because people spoke out very, very loudly."
Howell went further on the accountability standard he would apply to a Democratic secretary.
"If Mayorkas tweeted that, I would have immediately called for his impeachment: for flagrant admission that they are not enforcing the laws and faithfully executing them -- It was amnesty by another means."
He added that an Obama, Clinton, or Biden DHS secretary would have drawn impeachment calls for the same posture, and said he was not calling for Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s impeachment. Howell also warned that shifting signals are unfair to rank-and-file ICE agents tasked with carrying out deportations.
One day before the guidance news broke, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted that the department was “not conducting worksite operations in Kansas” while still targeting criminal illegal immigrants and those already facing removal. Howell said he had “never seen a secretary put anything like that in writing.”
The Kansas reference landed in a live political fight. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., had complained that DHS failed to coordinate with local authorities during ICE operations in cities including Liberal, in immigrant-heavy Republican districts in southwest Kansas. Worksite enforcement there has exposed a split inside the GOP coalition, business interests on one side, working-class voters who want the laws enforced on the other.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the administration has to stop talking out of both sides of its mouth.
"All of this comes on the backdrop of conflicting goals and messages within the administration on immigration."
"The administration does need to get its story straight internally so that they can then present a consistent message externally."
Krikorian’s blunt verdict on the Kansas message: “You don’t tweet out that you’re not doing what voters want you to do.”
President Trump told Fox News there had been no change in an enforcement posture that prioritizes, but is not limited to, the “worst first.” Border czar Tom Homan has likewise said immigrants without criminal records are not exempt from enforcement. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., has criticized pieces of the administration’s immigration push ahead of the midterms; Fox News Digital sought further comment from her and from DHS.
Officials point to operational numbers to back the hard line. Bis cited more than 3 million deportations thus far. An ICE report put arrests at a record high of 51,000 in August, and Bis said the agency had logged three straight months of record arrests. A photo from a pre-enforcement meeting in Chicago on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025, showed ICE and other federal officers preparing for operations under the larger deportation effort Trump pledged.
Still, the core facts of the flare-up remain messy. The absolute calendar date of the verbal guidance is not pinned down in public detail. The full text of the original instruction and of the rescinding message has not been released. Who first originated the pullback order remains unclear, beyond the administration’s account that it was a misunderstanding rather than a top-down revise of policy.
For agents in the field, that fog is the problem. Voters were promised the largest deportation effort in modern memory. Record arrest figures and a secure-border claim only matter if the people doing the arrests get one clear set of rules, not a verbal curveball that has to be yanked back before sundown.
Enforcement only works when the people issuing orders and the people carrying them out are reading from the same page.
