Internal orders handed
down by leaders at U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement instructed officers in the field to stop making vehicle stops, according to five ICE officials around the country.
The directive, handed down in at least three of ICE’s administrative regions Monday and effective immediately, came after a
pair of killings in Texas and Maine
by ICE agents that involved attempts to stop cars.
The ICE officers who spoke with The Intercept, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal orders, said the shift was meant to mitigate the chances of shootings like the ones that sparked outrage by taking the lives of two immigrants over the past week.
“Whatever these chucklefucks did in Maine and Houston is serious.”
“We have been told to either grab them before they leave their parking spot, or follow them and arrest them where they stop (ie a gas station or place of work) to avoid these situations,” said an ICE official from the South.
“This shit isn’t normal,” the official said. “Whatever these chucklefucks did in Maine and Houston is serious.”
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The five officials who spoke to The Intercept about the directive all hail from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, which carries out most of the federal government’s street immigration arrests. (ICE’s
Homeland Security Investigations
, the agency’s criminal investigative arm, did not receive a directive about vehicle stops, according to two special agents.)
The directive to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, which was first reported by the
New York Times
, didn’t come down as written orders, two of the ICE officials told The Intercept.
Instead, said one of the ICE officials who works in the Mountain West region, the order came down through field office directors to avoid red tape associated with putting an official policy in place.
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