By The Daily Wire (World News) | Created at 2026-09-29 15:35:47 | Updated at 2026-09-29 17:57:32
7 hours ago
Vice President JD Vance addressed The Daily Wire’s exclusive report on a directive instructing federal immigration agents to stop arresting non-criminals that has since been rescinded.
Over the weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sources across the country told The Daily Wire that they were given verbal orders to limit arrests solely to those with criminal charges or convictions, marking a major shift in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
The Department of Homeland Security tried to dismiss the report as “false,” saying “no one is off the table” for arrest.
The agency also said that ICE has commenced “a nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities” to target “criminal illegal aliens — many released from jails by sanctuary politicians — including murderers, rapists, child predators, and gang members.”
Hours after the orders became public, ICE gave officers the green light to continue nabbing non-criminal illegal immigrants.
In an interview with Vince Coglianese released Tuesday, Vance did not deny that the orders were given. He explained that the Trump administration is “prioritizing” criminals for deportation due to “fundamentally limited resources.” He also said that anyone who is in the country illegally is “subject to deportation.”
“Now, I think that the back and forth is, unfortunately, sometimes you have people who are leaking to reporters some internal policy documents, and my understanding of what happened is that, you know, yes, 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,” the vice president said.
“But that is not a reflection of overall deportation policy,” he said. “That’s about prioritizing fundamentally limited resources. One of the things, you know, I’m proudest of, both our DHS secretary, but also Stephen Miller, who kind of runs immigration policy from inside the White House, is when we started, we looked at this problem. We looked at the north of 10 million illegal aliens that had come in just under the last few years of the Biden administration. And then you add another 15 or 20 million on top of that who are already here. They said we need more people.”
Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, ICE has hired roughly 12,000 new officers and agents, more than doubling the agency’s workforce. The agency also received nearly $75 billion in additional funding from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
“And so it takes a long time to bring in, to train, to recruit the kind of people who can engage in the deportations that we need. But look, we’ve already, I think, gotten north of 3 million people out in just 18 months. Again, we have prioritized violent criminals, but nobody who has come into the United States illegally should remain in the United States. That remains our policy,” Vance said.
