JD Vance Responds To Daily Wire Report Exposing ICE Directive On Arrests

Vice President JD Vance has effectively conceded that immigration agents were told to concentrate on criminals, a directive that surfaced last weekend and was reversed within hours. In an interview with Vince Coglianese released Tuesday, Vance did not dispute that the instructions were issued. He framed them as prioritizing when manpower is scarce, not a change in overall deportation policy, and stressed that anyone in the country illegally can be removed, according to Daily Wire.

Daily Wire first reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement sources across the country had received spoken orders to arrest only people charged with or convicted of crimes, which would have been a major shift for the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign. The Department of Homeland Security called that "false," said "no one is off the table," and announced a nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities. Hours after the orders emerged, ICE officers were again allowed to detain immigrants without criminal records.

Vance criticized leaks of internal policy documents to journalists. He said an agent able to remove one person in a day should naturally pick a violent offender. He said he is proudest that the DHS secretary and Stephen Miller responded to the scale of the problem, more than 10 million entries under Biden plus another 15 or 20 million people already present, by demanding more personnel. Since Donald Trump returned to office, ICE has added about 12,000 people, doubling its workforce, and received nearly $75 billion in extra funding through the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Daily Wire’s reporting. Read the full story at Daily Wire →