Sometime Friday night, ICE officers across the country received verbal guidance to stop arresting illegal immigrants without criminal convictions or pending charges. By Saturday morning, the president of the United States had personally intervened to kill it.
ICE agents were told over the weekend to limit arrests to illegal immigrants with criminal records. Those with final deportation orders but no criminal history would be left alone. The directive also reportedly ended "collateral arrests" — meaning if agents found their criminal target alongside other people in the country illegally, they could only detain the target. Everyone else walks.
ICE agents were, in the words of Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, "shocked & frustrated" by the guidance. "Yes, this verbal guidance did go out to ICE offices across the country last night," Melugin reported on September 27. "I've spoken with ICE agents who received it." One anonymous officer told the Daily Wire what a lot of the base was thinking: "I hope Trump finds out about this sh*t and puts an end to it."
He did.
Melugin spoke directly with President Trump and nine ICE and DHS sources about the situation. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement that left no room for interpretation: "This is false. No one is off the table. We will continue to arrest any and all illegal aliens that come into our path." Trump confirmed through Melugin that anyone in the country illegally remains eligible for arrest and deportation. New guidance went out to field offices reaffirming that collateral arrests would continue.
The original directive was blamed on a "miscommunication" during internal conversations about prioritizing the "worst first." DHS called the initial reporting "false" — though Melugin confirmed the verbal guidance did, in fact, go out. Whether it was a deliberate policy shift that got reversed under pressure or a genuine miscommunication from someone who shouldn't have been freelancing on enforcement policy, the result is the same: it didn't survive contact with the base.
The context matters. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin halted ICE traffic stops back in July 2026 after fatal shootings in Bidderfield, Maine and Houston. On September 20, an ICE officer shot a Venezuelan migrant in Austin. Trump's approval rating on immigration sits at 43%, down from a high of 48% last summer. One ICE source said the quiet part: "They're trying to calm things down before the elections."
That calculation — ease up on enforcement to avoid bad headlines five weeks before voters go to the polls — is exactly the kind of Beltway math that Trump's base has zero patience for. And on Saturday, the base made that clear. The backlash was instant, loud, and effective. DHS announced "a nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities where our brave officers will be targeting criminal illegal aliens."