ICE Agents Got an Overnight Order to Ignore Deportation Orders and Trump Found Out

Alejandro Mayorkas tied ICE agents' hands with a 2021 memo ordering them to weigh excuses before making arrests.

Over the last weekend of September, ICE field offices nationwide got an overnight order that sounded awfully familiar.

Agents were furious, the story leaked, and word reached President Trump before the weekend was out.

The Order That Told ICE Agents to Walk Past Illegal Aliens

The Daily Wire's Jennie Taer broke the story on September 26.

ICE sources told her officers nationwide had been instructed to stop arresting illegal aliens with no criminal record.

Under the new guidance, agents could only arrest people with criminal convictions or pending charges.

Illegal aliens holding final deportation orders – people an immigration judge already ordered out of the country – would stay free if they had no rap sheet.

So-called "collateral arrests" were finished too.

Picture an agent hitting a house to grab a wanted criminal and being told to leave every other illegal alien in the living room alone.

One officer told Taer what the rank and file suspected: "We believe it has something to do with the midterms coming up. They're trying to calm things down before the elections."

Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin confirmed the guidance went out to ICE offices across the country.

He talked to agents who received it and said they "were shocked & frustrated by it."

These are men and women who get shot at, doxxed and screamed at for doing their jobs – and somebody told them to stand down.

The agents wanted one thing out of this mess.

They wanted the president to know what was being done in his name.

Trump Killed the Stand Down Order Before the Weekend Was Out

DHS fired back on X and left zero wiggle room.

"This is false. No one is off the table. We will continue to arrest any and all illegal aliens that come into our path. Anyone in our country illegally will be arrested and deported."

Then Melugin got President Trump on the phone.

Trump told him anyone in the country illegally remains "on the table" for arrest and deportation.

Fresh guidance hit ICE field offices confirming that "arrests of illegal aliens and 'collaterals' without additional criminal history will continue."

The message to agents was simple: "There is no change in immigration enforcement policy."

Nine ICE and DHS sources told Melugin the order was an erroneous "miscommunication" – and that "it's unclear who it started with."

That answer won't hold up for long.

A directive straight out of the Mayorkas playbook does not write itself, and Trump's team needs to find out whose fingerprints are on it.

Biden Already Ran the Criminals Only Experiment

America has seen this movie before.

Barack Obama sold his 2014 "felons, not families" priorities as common sense.

Mayorkas took it further in September 2021, ordering agents to weigh "mitigating factors" like how long an illegal alien had lived here before making an arrest.

The memo also shut down mass worksite raids.

The results were a disaster.

ICE made 74,082 arrests in fiscal year 2021 – a 28 percent drop from the year before – and deported just 59,011 people, the lowest number in the agency's history.

A federal judge in Ohio partially blocked the Mayorkas memo in March 2022 for defying detention requirements Congress wrote into law.

Meanwhile, millions poured across Biden's open border.

A Final Deportation Order Is the End of the Line

Tom Homan says ICE posted record arrest numbers in June, beat them in July and August, and kept rolling through September.

Breitbart reports ICE is arresting roughly 50,000 illegal aliens a month, with total deportations past 2 million.

That is exactly the momentum the stand down order would have strangled.

A final deportation order is the end of due process, not the beginning.

The illegal alien got a hearing, got a lawyer, got an appeal, and lost.

Telling agents to ignore those orders turns every immigration judge in America into a suggestion box.

Breitbart also reported the rumor surfaced as GOP establishment figures and business lobbyists lean on the White House to go easy on the workers they depend on.

Trump listened to the agents instead of the lobbyists, and the door slammed shut before the weekend was over.

Sources:

• Jennie Taer, "EXCLUSIVE: ICE Officers Say They Were Told To Stop Arresting Non-Criminals," The Daily Wire, Sept. 26, 2026.
• Amanda Macias and Bill Melugin, "Trump reaffirms ICE arrest policy after confusing guidance sparks alarm among agents," Fox News, Sept. 27, 2026.
• Neil Munro, "DHS Debunks ICE Deportation Stand-Down Rumor," Breitbart, Sept. 27, 2026.
• Jack Phillips, "DHS Denies Reports ICE Is Pulling Back on Arresting Illegal Immigrants," The Epoch Times, Sept. 27, 2026.
• Kevin Haggerty, "Trump gives ICE new marching orders – Bill Melugin says agents are already changing course," BizPac Review, Sept. 28, 2026.
• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "ICE Annual Report Fiscal Year 2021," ICE, March 2022.