Orders for what one official called a “national no enforcement day” began circulating on Monday inside U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
asserted
official → call → Enforcement
Handed down through ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division through internal group chats and verbal commands, the directive called for a halt to all immigration enforcement operations on Election Day, according to ICE officials across the country who spoke to The Intercept.
uncertain
who → hand → Intercept
“We were told all operations are canceled for Election Day,” said one ICE immigration official, who operates in the south and requested anonymity to protect their livelihood.
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who → tell → livelihood
According to multiple ICE officials who spoke to The Intercept, the orders were handed down quietly to avoid media attention.
uncertain
orders → accord → attention
“Yesterday was the least amount of activity observed from ICE ERO throughout the entire year so far,” said Sherman Austin, the creator of StopICE.net, a crowdsourced platform tracking reported ICE activity across the United States.
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Austin → observe → States
“You can kind of tell like from the morning.
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You → tell → morning
Usually, ICE gets started really early, and there’s a huge spike in activity between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m.
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ICE → start → a.m.
Another ICE official, who works in the Great Lakes region, confirmed the orders ahead of Election Day, referring to it as “National No Enforcement Day.”
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who → work → Day
“We were told to do ‘admin’ shit,” the official said.
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official → tell → shit
They said that ICE deportation officers who regularly do street-level operations were diverted to administrative office work:
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who → say → work
“I’ll be drinking coffee at the office for the first time in a year.”
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I → drink → year
In total, ICE officials working in four areas of responsibility — ICE’s jurisdictional regions — coving parts of the northeastern, midwestern, northern, and south-central U.S. regions told The Intercept that they had received orders to stand down on Election Day.
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they → work → Day
“Something Unusual Was Going On”
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Something → go → ?
StopICE, the tracking website, which has roughly half a million subscribers, did record some ICE activity on Election Day, according to Austin, although most of the reports stemmed from sightings unrelated to any immigration enforcement activities.
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most → track → activities
“There were a few reports that came in about ICE being at usual spots like the jails,” Austin said, “or seen driving in certain areas in in the city, but it wasn’t the same type of activity that’s usually seen on the site.
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that → be → site
It was pretty clear that something unusual was going on.”
AntiFreeze, another crowdsourced ICE-tracking platform that allows users to report and receive real-time alerts about ICE raids, also saw abnormally low levels of ICE activity on November 3, according to Josh, the creator and developer behind the site, who requested to keep his last name anonymous.
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who → go → name
“On Election Day, our network only logged about 56 reported ICE sightings nationwide, which is one of the quietest Tuesdays we’ve ever seen,” Josh said.
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Josh → log → Tuesdays
“We did get about three sightings that did report ICE activity near polling stations, but most of the reports were observations of vehicles associated with ICE.
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most → get → ICE
We barely got any reports about actual ICE arrests yesterday.”
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We → get → arrests
Local activists also observed a low level of ICE activity on the street level.
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activists → observe → level
“There was no evidence of street abductions,” said an activist working with the rapid-response network in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.
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activist → be → Cities
“ICE, in some capacity, was still out and about, but we did not see any reports of off-the-street detainments by ICE or attempts at detainments,” said the activist, who said they got word of ICE arrests at jails, but not targeted operations among the general public.
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they → see → public
“There were a lot of folks, probably more than usual, observing, and so I think we can be pretty confident that this wasn’t due to lack of observation.”
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this → be → observation
Leo Martinez, who volunteers with VC Defensa in Southern California, told The Intercept that no one in his rapid-response group reported any sightings of ICE activity on Tuesday.
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one → tell → Tuesday
It is still unclear exactly where the orders to halt immigration enforcement operations on Election Day originated from, although some ICE officials believe the orders stemmed from ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations leadership — and not directly from the White House.
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orders → halt → House
“Nobody from the SDDO level” — a reference to Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer, part of ICE’s upper management — “expected it to happen until the very last moment,” said another ICE official familiar with the matter.
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official → expect → matter
“But I think some of us caught on that senior leadership was making this call with fears of us being at the polls.”
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us → think → polls
The official said, “It’s crazy that The White House didn’t catch on.”
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House → say → ?
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