Morning Wire - DHS Called It False. Then It Was Confirmed.

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

Daily Wire immigration reporter and Dao Prize nominee Jennie Taer joins Tim Rice to go behind her explosive exclusive: ICE officers across the country say they were verbally ordered to stop arresting illegal immigrants without criminal records. The order closely echoed Biden-era policy, the opposite of the mass deportation agenda many Trump voters were expecting. Within hours, DHS called the report false. Then Fox News and CBS helped confirm it, new verbal orders reversed course, and Vice President JD Vance acknowledged a communication breakdown. Jennie explains why frustrated officers came to her, who might have been behind the order, why something this big was never put in writing, and what it's like to break a story the federal government says isn't true. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Jerry is the only app that compares rates for over 50 insurers and minutes, and it helps you switch fast with no spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Before you renew your car insurance policy, do yourself a favor. Download the Jerry app or head to jerry.a.ai slash wire. Hello, I'm Tim Rice. Welcome to another edition of Behind the Story. We're joined today by a friend of the show. show, repeat guest, Daily Wire, immigration reporter Jenny Tare.

Jenny, it's so great to have you back, especially because we just can't keep you away. You keep breaking such incredible stories. So excited to have you here and dig into this one. Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm excited to talk about this one for sure. And I just have to say before we even get into it, that just a few days ago, you were nominated for the Dow Prize, the Dow Awards for Excellence in Journal and Investigations. reporting. You were nominated for Best Multimedia Reporting for your coverage of the ice raids

in Minneapolis and your ride along with ice and various other pieces that you did around then. So congratulations to that. I believe we talked about that on this show. If not, definitely in other places. And everyone should go find those stories. But before they do, they should go read the story that we are going to talk about today, which came out over the last week. The headline is exclusive ICE officers say they were told to stop arresting non-criminal. So pretty descriptive from the headline there, but this really is one of those stories where so much went on behind the scenes. So walk us through what happened, starting please from how did you even hear about this?

Yeah, a pretty wild story and crazy chain of events that occurred after we published. But to give you a short version of what happened is we received word from several of our sources within ICE that they were told that they should stop making arrests of non-criminal illegal immigrants. So anyone who has a rap sheet is still, you know, up for the taking. But if someone is here illegally and they lack a criminal conviction or charge, they can't put hands on them. That's what they were told. And this is from multiple officers in multiple parts of the country. This isn't just one office. This isn't just one source. This came from multiple sources. So what ended up happening is we immediately published on this.

We reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and we just wrote that this is what they were being told and that it really came in contrast to the goal of mass deportations and what Trump has promised the American people. And so what ended up happening is DHS said that it was false after we had published and that no one is off the table for arrests and deportation. And then they confirmed that there is an ongoing nationwide effort targeting criminal illegal immigrants. Now, hold on. I want to stop right there just because already there's so much. So a couple of things to flag. The first is that this was what, Saturday night, Sunday night, it was late. It was a weekend. It was Saturday night. It was Saturday night.

You messaged me and a couple other editors and said, I just heard from two of my, sources and this is happening. And you, we quickly discussed what to do. We realized that this was a pretty big scoop and not to out you, but Jenny texts us and says, all right, I'm bringing my laptop to the bar. And so Jenny's at the bar. I'm at home with my kids. And we crank this story out. And of course, you know, Jenny's a pro. You had your facts right. You had your two good sources. You reached out to DHS for comment. They did not respond to your request for comment. I think that's a very important thing to flag given what comes next. So that's how we got here. That's what we cranked this out. Now let's slow down just really quick and unpack exactly what you just said, because you

just said that DHS came out and said that this didn't happen, but also that it wasn't going to keep happening, which is a little bit of a contradiction. Right. And, you know, when you're a reporter, you respond to something like that by having a heart attack. When you see a federal agency call your reporting false, but we know our sources are solid. We know we did our due diligence by reaching out to DHS before they said that. We know that, you know, we heard this from sources all over the country, and that was solid.

And it was proven to be so as well. by Fox News and CBS News, who later confirmed the same thing that ICE officers were told in multiple areas of the country to stop making arrests of non-criminals and that it might have been a result of a miscommunication within the agency, which is just absurd to think about because how is something so major miscommunicated by the time it gets down to the people who are tasked with carrying out this operation for the Trump administration? It really is mind-boggling. And what exactly were people saying? Because we've heard a lot sort of here and there

and there's been a lot of speculation of how this happened. And I think one of the kind of the big answer that DHS is settling on is that this was just a verbal order. Like this wasn't written and disseminated, which in and of itself seems weird, that something like this would just get handed down kind of through a game of telephone. What exactly is going on with that? Exactly. So it was a verbal order. and that's really a strange thing because it's such a major order.

It's such a major directive to go back to basically what ICE agents were told to do under the Biden administration. There was a memo that Secretary Mayorkas at the time had issued in September 2021 that was restricting arrests and deportations because of a lack of resources. That's what he said within the agency. And so they really only wanted to go after hardened criminals. And what that did is it really tied the hands of ICE officers and agents. That's where these concerned officers came in and contacted us. That's why they did it. They were frustrated and they don't want to go back to that.

And they also felt like because of what happened earlier this year with traffic stops after shootings by ICE during these traffic stops, ICE shortly for a period, they paused all traffic stops. ICE officers could not pull over anyone on the roads. They had to make arrests by getting criminal warrants and executing, you know, going into a home. Or they would wait for a target to, let's say, walk out their home, go on the street, whatever it was, but they couldn't pull them over in a vehicle. And that order was very short-lived, only because the president didn't get word of it until it became public in the media. and then he put out a true social post and said, we're going back to this immediately. And so these officers felt like maybe someone went around the president here,

and we need to also go to people like the Daily Wire to report this because, you know, maybe the president doesn't know about it and needs to get out. And so that's another element to all of this. Yeah, that was something that really struck me was that all of the sources that you talked to were pretty confident that the president would have been unaware of this. The kicker of the piece was one of the sources said, I hope Trump finds out about this shit and puts an end to it. Like, there was no doubt in their minds that the president didn't know about this.

And I think it was also just sort of a good, you know, a good sense of how ice agents in the fields are thinking about their job, right? Like, they, they wasted no time in sounding the alarm on this. they realized that this is, you know, this would have been a mistake. This was a policy error. And again, just to clarify, because I think sometimes it, especially for our listeners and readers, it's what this order essentially was saying was that being here illegally was not in and of itself a criminal offense. Obviously, it wasn't like a legal ruling, but that's, that's what we're saying,

when we're saying this. You would have had to, you could only arrest illegal immigrants who had robbed a liquor store or ran a red light or something like that. I think you even said that under the guidance as it was transmitted and as you understood it, even final deportation orders, which are basically like APBs for immigration authorities. If you see this guy get him out of the country, even that didn't count, which is crazy. So, all right, so then comes the non-denial denials and everything that followed. Walk us through the aftermath.

Yeah, so then, and just to go back to the verbal. order thing. I just want to make one thing clear too is that within hours of this coming down, we saw that, you know, that tweet from DHS about calling it false. And then internally, ICE officers, sources within the agency started to reach out in the days that followed and said, hey, now we're getting verbal orders that these arrests are back on. Now we're going back to what we're doing before everyone's on the table. So it was a quick backtracking. And it also was like, Okay, so the first time you did this, verbal orders were given, and now you're making another sweeping policy change, but again, you're doing it verbally.

You know, is that because the agency does not want more leaks to get out? Because then it would be an admission that, yes, this in fact did happen. But we did see others respond to this, like Vice President J.D. Vance, who did acknowledge that, yes, this was part of maybe a bum. communication that happened within the agency. But again, reiterated that if you're here illegally, you are a target of ICE and you should leave on your own if you can. But otherwise, we're going to come and get you. He didn't dismiss any of our reporting when he was asked about it. And that's, you know, that's telling as well. Yeah, I just want to quickly read from what the

vice president said. Because again, it's, it's sort of this non-denial denial, this very governmental speak. He said, 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, but that is not a reflection of overall deportation policy, that's about prioritizing fundamentally limited resources. And it goes on and on. And there's a lot of word salad to pick through there. But the one thing, and you sort of

alluded to this, and you said this on X after, was that that is exactly the same argument that Alejandro Majorcas made, which is ridiculous for the vice president to make for two reasons. The first is that Majorcas was clearly using that as a cover for the Biden administration's refusal. to deport people, right? That was just another excuse. And then the second is that DHS is actually way better funded now than it was under the Biden years, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We go back to the one big, beautiful bill. That gave ICE a surge of funding, like $75 billion to expand their detention capacity to hire more agents and officers. They hired like 12,000 new agents and officers. And now we're seeing new reporting that they're also now trying to do another hiring surge of $5,000.

employees that are mainly deportation officers. So they've had a lot of resources thrown at them. They're basically like a military. They're funded like a military. And so, you know, saying that they're limited and then their resources, that they have to allocate resources to the worst of the worst. Yeah, it kind of sounded like the Mayorkas memo to me. But it also is not really fully.

the real story. I mean, yes, they are targeting more people than the Biden administration did. And yes, there are never going to be enough resources for that. But to say you're short-handed that you are only really going after the worst of the worst because of this, but no one's off the table. I mean, the communication is really, really confusing. I think also to the American people because Trump's base seemed pretty fired up about this. I saw a lot of people on X responding to it and just saying that, you know, Trump is pretty much like appeasing the left with an order like this, that ICE is moving back essentially, like we said, to what they were doing under the Biden administration, that this is amnesty. So they're not happy with this. Trump's already losing

support on immigration from, you know, from others. You know, if we look at like South Texas, the Hispanic community there, they're not happy with the direction things are going because arrests have become so sweeping. It's not just criminals. It's not just those with final deportation orders. You know, they're seeing those airport arrests of individuals who may have pending applications in the immigration system. So they're very frustrated with that. So it's kind of like a lose-lose for Trump when it comes to this specific story. Yeah. And from your reporting, I know some of the sources speculated what the motives behind this, again, very brief policy change. would have, could have been.

And they were basically saying that this was maybe a move from DHS secretary Mark Moyne Mullen or from higher up in the Trump administration to sort of tamped down on things in the run up to the midterms. Did you find anything that suggested that that was right or, again, just sort of given your view of the landscape, do you think that that's what was going on here? Or was this really just, as the vice president was trying to say, like a totally just bungled a message? Yeah, it's not really clear what exactly was the motivator behind this order or who it came down from.

But definitely they brought up, those sources brought up the midterms that things are getting heated for Trump when it comes to immigration. They don't know if it's because of that. You know, there are several, you know, explanations. Could it have been that miscommunication? someone who maybe doesn't like the president. I don't know. I've heard that floated around. You know, some of these like so-called swamp creatures put this into place.

It sounded like there was something that was communicated from headquarters, but that by the time it got down, it was like a game of telephone. By the time it got down to these field offices, then it was completely different than the message that was originally given. We don't know. But again, going back to the whole bird, communications of this story. I mean, that's really the weird thing here is we've seen in the past that when there's something major like this, when there's a major change to how ISIS operating

in our country, it's usually communicated via an email, via a memo. They want the officers to be clear on what their instructions are, what their orders are, especially you would think right now, because of how scrutiny they're facing every time they go out to make an arrest. There's people watching them. There's people videotaping them. Now they're all wearing body-worn cameras, so the agency is keeping eyes on them as well. So, you know, it's also an element of that. I want to circle back a little and kind of brought it out.

You alluded to this at the beginning when we talked about DHS coming out and saying the reporting was false, and it's enough to give any reporter a heart attack. Now, I actually was lucky because that would usually be enough to give an editor a heart attack too, but again, I know that you're sourced stuffing up where I was like, all right, well, it's going to be okay. You know, we'll figure this out. But I do want to talk a little about what goes through your head in moments like this, when, you know, again, just to sort of reiterate what the stakes are here. It's not a workday. It's a Saturday night.

You have people reaching out to you with a potentially explosive story. one that seems, honestly, at first, given everything we know about the Trump administration, if it wasn't that you trusted these sources, this seems like something we were just sort of dismisses. Like, there's no way that's happening. But you trust your sources. So you're working against the clock. You're working at sort of a weird schedule. You have these guys who you trust.

DHS isn't responding. Like, how do you approach these stories? How do you decide what you're going to bite on, what you're not going to do, when to wait for comment, when to go to press? Like, what is, talk a little bit about that? Well, you know, I make sure that I'm hearing from multiple sources and that these are solid people that I've worked with for years. And a lot of them contacted me without, you know, me having to reach out. Because sometimes I'm just in communication, what's new, what's happening, is anything

changing with detention? Is anything changing with the rest? Are you guys getting new orders on anything? You know, whatever it is. But this was kind of like one of those five alarm. where you just get a bunch of officers reaching out to you like, hey, we were just told this. And then I'm like, well, that's weird because that person's in this part of the country. This other person's in another part of the country.

You know, it wouldn't be connected at all. You know, kind of just like thinking about those factors. Like that had to come from Washington if it was something that was communicated to these parts of the country. You know, and just working off of that. gosh, it was nerve-wracking. You know, you're always, you know, nervous about these types of stories. But, you know, we also reached out to DHS and gave them a shot at answering us. We didn't hear a response before we publish. But I will say the most nerve-wracking part was having to watch at the same time the LSU-A-N-M game.

So. Oh, man. That's maybe a cool thing. multi-heart attacks going on. Just a tough night all around for you. My final question just sort of on this is, you know, we've mentioned your sources, right? We've talked a lot about this, and obviously we're not going to divulge who they are. But in this instance and in other instances, how do you kind of conceive of if I report what my trusted sources are telling me, it might hinder my ability to act, it might lead to DHS comms reducing my. my access, right? Like, do you, is this a thing that you think about? Is this something that you

worry about? Do you ever make that kind of, like, cost-benefit analysis in your head? Or are you really just singularly focused on getting the good stories out? With a story like this, I don't really consider that. This is something that's very important to get out, especially for my sources. They really wanted to change things. They wanted things to go back to the way that they were before this verbal order was given. And so that was a huge motivator and also just thinking about what the American people should know and they should know something like that. And I've been doing this for so long that you always bounce back. I mean, someone could get upset at you for a short time and maybe, you know, there's some repercussions to that.

but I'm always going to be polite, give a party that we're writing negatively about maybe a shot at answering questions about it, always making sure that you know that you're absolutely open to what they have to say. We'll include what you'll give us. you know, we just want to, you know, understand what happened here because it really is. Like I'm just coming from a place of understanding. Like I'm trying to untangle a web of, you know, maybe it was miscommunication in this case. But what happened and how did it happen? And if you're saying it's false, but then the White House and the vice president are saying

something that seems to validate it, you know, then I think you have you have something that, you know, we need to continue to look at. And I'm not going to back down from that just because maybe I'm afraid of ruffling feathers. I think you're always going to ruffle feathers in journalism. And if you don't, then maybe you're not making an impact. Oh, man, an absolutely legendary line and a perfect place to end. Another fascinating conversation with Jenny Tehr, the Daily Wires, Immigration Correspondent, and Dow Prize nominee. Jenny, thank you as always for joining us. Thank you.

And thank you all for listening. I am Tim Rice. This has been another edition of Behind the Story. Come back next week. We'll do it all again. Bye.