DHS Called It False. Then It Was Confirmed.

0:00Okay, first before we give you the facts of the day, run hide fight infadels is streaming now only on daily wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s. There's even a love story which nobody expected. And you can support daily wires mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. Well, polls tell you what voters said at one moment, but Cal State gives you another way to follow a race. A live market that moves as traders respond to new information. In Michigan, Abdul Al-Sayed and Mike Rogers are competing in one of Cal State's most traded midterm matchups. You can visit Cal State's midterm hub to track how the market views the race and then trade an event contract on the outcome you think is going to happen. If you're right at settlement, each winning contract is worth $1. See the market, make your call, trade what happens next on Cal State. Use code daily DAILY to get up to $25 when you trade $25. That's Cal State's KALSHI trade on anything. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply

1:01event contracts trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Cal State products are not available in all jurisdictions, prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, you can go see calcie.com slash regulatory. Jerry handles the legwork by comparing quotes side by side from over 50 top and shores so you can confidently hit buy. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry even tracks rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Don't settle for higher rates, download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai slash wire today. Hello, I'm Tim Rice. Welcome to another edition of Behind the Story. We're joined today by a friend of the show, repeat guest daily wire immigration reporter Jenny Tehr. Jenny, it's so great to have you back especially because we just can't keep you away.

2:02You 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 a the Dow prize, the Dow Awards for Excellence in Journey and Investigative Reporting. You were nominated for the best multimedia reporting for your coverage of the ice rates in Minneapolis and you're right 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 criminals. So pretty descriptive from the headline there, but this really is one of the stories where

3:03so 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 legal 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.

4:05And 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. We saturday night. It was Saturday night. You messaged me in a couple other editors and said, I just heard from two of my sources. And this is happening. And we quickly discussed what to do. We realized that this was a pretty big scoop. And not to out you. But Jenny Texas and says, all right, I'm bringing my laptop to the barn. So Jenny's at the bar. I'm at home with my kids.

5:06And 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 how we crank 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, um, you know, we heard this from sources all over the country.

6:08And 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 internet itself seems weird that something like this would just get handed down kind of through the game of telephone. What exactly is going on with that?

7:09Exactly. 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

8:11shortly 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 like 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 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

9:14Trump 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 where of how ice agents in the fields are thinking about their job, right? Like they there was they wasted no time in sounding the alarm on this. They were, they realized that this is, you know, this would have been a mistake. This was a policy error. And again, just to clarify, I said that 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 what we're saying. We're saying this. You you could only arrest illegal immigrants who had robbed a liquor store or ran a red light or something like that. Just and you 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. Like if you see this guy get him out of the country, even that

10:15didn'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.

11:21But we did see others respond to this like vice president JD Vance who did acknowledge that, yes, this was part of maybe a bungled communication that happened within the agency. But again, reiterated that if you're here legally, 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 telling as well. Yeah, I just want to quickly read from what the vice president said because again, 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 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 violent crime. Of course, we're going

12:25to 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 Maioorcus made, is ridiculous for the vice president to make for two reasons. The first is that Maioorcus was clearly using that as a cover for the Biden administration's refusal to deport people. 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. 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

13:30are 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 in their resources, that they have to allocate resources to the worst of the worst. Yeah, it kind of sounded like the Maioorcus 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 shorthanded 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 communications 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

14:33moving 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 from 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 are 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 Mullen or

15:34from higher up in the Trump administration to sort of tamp 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 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 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. There are several 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. Some of these so-called swamp creatures put this into place. It sounded like there was something

16:35that 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 verbal communications of this story. 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 ice is 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 they haven't screwed in either face-syncing. 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. The agency is keeping eyes on them as well. It's also an element of that.

17:37I want to circle back a little and broaden out. You alluded to this in 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 your source stuff and up where I was like, all right, well, it's going to be okay. We'll figure this out, but I do want to talk a little about what goes through your head in moments like this. Again, just to sort of reiterate what the stakes are here. It's not a work day. 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 would just sort of dismiss as like, there's no way that's happening. But you trust your sources. You're working against the clock. You're working at sort of a weird schedule. You have these guys you trust. DHS isn't responding. How do you approach these stories? How do you decide

18:42what you're going to bite on? What you're not going to do? When to wait for comment? When to go to press? What is talk a little bit about that? Well, I make sure that I'm hearing from multiple sources and that these are solid people that I've worked with for years. A lot of them contacted 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? Whatever it is. But this was one of those five alarm fires 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. It wouldn't be connected at all. Kind of just like thinking about those factors. That had to come from Washington if it was something that was communicated to these parts of the

19:43country. And just working off of that, gosh, it was nerve-wracking. You're always nervous about these types of stories. But we also reached out to DHS and gave them a shot at answering us. We didn't hear a response before we published, but I will say the most nerve-wracking part was having to watch at the same time the LSU A&M game. So... Oh, man, that's maybe... That was like multi-hearted text going on. Just a tough night all around for you. My final question just sort of on this is, 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 it might lead to DHS comms reducing my access, right? Like, is this a thing that you think about

20:50as something that you worry about? Do you ever make that kind of 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 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 of answering questions

21:53about 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. We just want to understand what happened here. Because it really is. I'm just coming from a place of understanding. I'm trying to untangle a web of 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, then I think you have something that 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

23:01to end another fascinating conversation with Jenny Tehrer, 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.