DOJ and DHS Just Shut Down the New York Times Smear Job on FBI and ICE Lickety-split

An illegal alien tried to run down an ICE agent with his car in Maine last week.

The New York Times turned that shooting into a claim that the FBI stopped investigating ICE altogether.

Two federal agencies fired back within hours, and their answer exposes exactly how far the Times will go.

A Memo That Supposedly Rewrote the Rules

Reporters Devlin Barrett and Hamed Aleaziz dropped their story on a Sunday, timed for maximum outrage.

Their claim was simple and terrifying if true.

FBI managers had been quietly told the bureau would stop investigating physical confrontations involving ICE agents.

The Times said the notice went out the same week ICE agents fatally shot two illegal aliens – Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.

Federal officials say both men used their vehicles as weapons and tried to run agents down before they were shot.

None of that stopped the Times from framing two lawful uses of force as the real scandal.

The paper's sources were anonymous.

The Justice Department and DHS were not.

Within hours, the two agencies issued a joint statement gutting the story's central premise.

"FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy," the statement read.

That single line collapsed the Times' entire narrative before most Americans had finished their coffee.

The Pattern Washington Keeps Ignoring

This is not the first time the Times has tried to turn ICE enforcement into a scandal and gotten caught flat-footed.

DHS spent last October publicly correcting a Times report claiming agents were detaining U.S. citizens during targeted operations.

The department did it again in February, knocking down a Times story alleging illegal aliens were denied medical care in detention.

Each time, the pattern is identical.

An anonymous claim goes viral first.

The facts arrive second, buried under a headline nobody remembers reading a correction to.

Meanwhile, the actual enforcement record tells a very different story than the one the Times keeps trying to sell.

Federal prosecutors have brought assault-on-officer cases against more than 550 people since the crackdown began.

That is not the record of an agency operating with impunity.

That is the record of an administration prosecuting people who attack law enforcement, exactly as it promised voters it would.

Houston and Biddeford were not mysteries.

The FBI was already on scene investigating both shootings under standard protocol the same week the Times claims that protocol vanished.

FBI Director Kash Patel runs a bureau that has spent the past year fielding accusations from the same handful of outlets every time an ICE shooting makes headlines.

Not one of those earlier stories held up once the paperwork came out.

The Times knows that history.

It ran the story anyway.

Why This Fight Actually Matters

Here is the part your local news anchor will not tell you.

If the FBI really stepped back from investigating ICE, that would be a five-alarm story worth covering hard.

But the Times did not produce the memo.

It did not name a single source willing to put their name behind the claim.

It ran with a tip, slapped a headline on it, and let the internet do the rest.

Two federal agencies with their names and reputations on the line said flatly that nothing changed.

Reporters with anonymous sources and a deadline said otherwise.

Every American who has watched this same script play out for a decade already knows which side has more to lose by lying.

DHS and DOJ do not get to hide behind anonymity.

The New York Times does, and it used that shield again to manufacture a crisis out of two agents defending themselves from men trying to kill them with their cars.

You deserve better than a newspaper that treats officer safety as raw material for a Sunday scare story.

You have watched this play out before, and you will watch it again the next time an ICE agent has to make a split-second decision to survive.

The Times does not have to live with the consequences of the panic it creates.

The agents on that highway in Houston and that road in Biddeford do.

So do their families, waiting each night for them to come home safe.

The next time a Times headline tells you to fear the people protecting your border, ask who actually had the facts first.

Sources:

• Devlin Barrett and Hamed Aleaziz, "Federal Agents Are Told F.B.I. Will No Longer Investigate ICE Confrontations," The New York Times, July 19, 2026.
• Bob Price, "Soros-Funded Texas District Attorney Announces Investigation into Fatal ICE Shooting in Houston," Breitbart, July 13, 2026.
• Staff, "Border / Cartel Chronicles," Breitbart, July 2026.
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "DHS Debunks New York Times False Reporting: DHS Does NOT Deport U.S. Citizens," Homeland Security, October 1, 2025.
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "DHS Sets the Record Straight on New York Time's FALSE Claims Regarding Medical Care at ICE Detention Facilities," Homeland Security, February 17, 2026.