ICE Was Secretly Ordered to Stop All Immigration Raids on Election Day

On Election Day, orders were secretly issued to halt all immigration enforcement activities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This "national no enforcement day" was communicated through internal group chats and verbal commands within ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. According to ICE officials across the country, they were instructed to cancel all operations for the day, although some received the directive via informal word of mouth. The secrecy surrounding the orders aimed to avoid media attention and public scrutiny.

Multiple ICE officials confirmed that the orders were kept discreet to prevent any public backlash or attention from the media. Sherman Austin, a creator of StopICE.net, a crowdsourced platform tracking reported ICE activity, noted that Election Day observed the least amount of activity from ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) throughout the year.

Sherman Austin, who operates in the South, mentioned that usually, ICE starts its operations early in the morning, but on Election Day, there was no significant activity between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. Another ICE official working in the Great Lakes region also corroborated the existence of the orders.

Inside ICE, officials expressed confusion over the sudden halt in immigration enforcement. Some believed the orders came from within ICE’s ERO leadership rather than directly from the White House. Sherman Austin also saw that despite some reports of ICE presence at usual locations like jails, the overall activity was notably lower than usual. Similarly, another crowdsourced tracking platform, AntiFreeze, reported abnormally low levels of ICE activity on Election Day, with only about 56 sightings nationwide.