Inside ICE, Officials Question String of Trump Admin “Midterm Panic Moves”

After agents with Homeland Security Investigations, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, raided the Washington, D.C., home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Monday morning, officials who spoke to The Intercept raised questions about whether the raid was political in nature.

Though the investigation into Omar has reportedly been ongoing for years, an ICE official working in immigration enforcement suggested the timing of the raid raised questions.

“She’s always been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration,” said the ICE official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to protect their livelihood. “This has to be politically motivated.”

The raid is the latest of what several officials inside ICE told The Intercept were a series of moves — policy changes, sweeping initiatives, and, in Omar’s case, a specific operation — that reflect a scramble to help lift Republicans’ dimming prospects in November’s midterm elections.

In the last month, ICE has undertaken steps like removing vehicle stop training, announcing surges into sanctuary cities, and freezing then quickly unfreezing non-criminal deportations — what one official called a “midterm panic move.”

According to analysts, these politically charged moves are rapidly degrading the reputation of law enforcement agencies among many Americans.

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“Throughout the Trump administration, we have seen them use law enforcement for overtly political purposes, often directly targeting blue states or blue politicians for their actions” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “This is something that has really been a significant challenge for the reputation of law enforcement, because we have seen so many issues along these lines where there are allegations of these overtly political actions.”

Reporting had linked the raid on Omar’s home immigration paperwork — she arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in 1995 and naturalized five years later — but a second ICE official familiar with the matter questioned that explanation.

“There is something more than that, there have to be other charges for the substantiation of the warrant because a judge wouldn’t sign something beyond statute of limitations,” said the official, who is with Homeland Security Investigations, the arm of ICE that carried out the raid, who also spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity.

An article in the New York Post suggested the investigation might be related to an effort by Omar in 2019, just after she arrived in Congress, to correct her birth year in a Minnesota state legislature library.

The statute of limitations for crimes related to citizenship, according to a Justice Department website, is 10 years. Civil denaturalization proceedings do not have a statute of limitations, but must meet certain conditions, according to Reichlin-Melnick.

“In order to subject someone to civil denaturalization,” Reichlin-Melnick said, “the government has must prove either that the person committed fraud or that they were ineligible for naturalization in the first place.”

“A Waste of Time”

According to accounts from inside ICE, the moves, allegedly motivated by the midterms, are creating chaos and confusion inside the agency — and fostering resentment among employees.

“We are highly trained agents who should be working child exploitation and trafficking cases, instead we are being used as pawns in our administration’s games,” said the Homeland Security Investigations official, touching on a shift away from the ICE branch’s traditional areas of focus. “I think everything happening with the agency right now is related to the midterms and to stoke divisive fires.”

Politically motivated operations started ramping up inside Homeland Security Investigations after federal agents were ordered to pursue a criminal voter fraud probe across nine states in early September, according to the first ICE official.

“The voter fraud initiative was just inefficient and ridiculous,” the official said. “Knocking on doors to question people about voting before you even have evidence to present to them is a non-starter.”

The official added, “Directing your entire workforce to do that for weeks instead of real criminal investigations is a waste of time.”

“It Backfired”

With the midterms themselves approaching, fresh controversies engulfed ICE, prompting the administration to react with a string of messy policy changes and public announcements.

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As the voter fraud investigations were underway, public backlash erupted after immigration officers from ICE’s other division, Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, shot and wounded a 28-year-old Venezuelan man during a traffic stop in Austin, Texas, on September 20.

Days later, on the weekend of September 25, ICE leadership quietly issued internal orders for a major change that would overhaul nationwide immigration enforcement. The orders directed all deportation officers to stop arresting undocumented immigrants without criminal histories. After news of the orders broke in the right-wing Daily Wire, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, denied the story.

Despite the denial, ICE officials operating across the country told The Intercept that the orders were legitimate and stayed in place for nearly a week.

“We reverted back to Biden-era enforcement,” said one official with Enforcement and Removal Operations, who was ordered to stop all arrest of non-criminal immigrants, including those who had standing deportation orders from immigration judges. “The DHS denied it but the orders stayed in place for 4-5 days and we followed them.”

Another deportation officer, who also asked for anonymity, described the orders as a “midterm panic move” in response to the ICE shooting in Austin.

“Our FODS” — field office directors — “told us through our team group chats and word-of-mouth to keep it out of the press, it was never in writing. I think leadership wanted to dial things back after the Austin shooting, but the orders got leaked and it backfired.”

On the same day as the leak and denial, the Department of Homeland Security seemed to take a harder public line by announcing a “nationwide public safety surge in sanctuary cities” targeting “criminal illegal aliens.”

Vehicle Stops “Shit Show”

On October 1, a week after the stand-down order, the Washington Examiner reported on another leaked DHS guidance that announced the formally amended ICE’s vehicle stops policy.

The Department of Homeland Security issued another direct denial, downplaying the significance of the guidance, which took aim at keeping unexperienced personnel from engaging with vehicles.

“Wrong, this is nothing new. This memo makes no changes to how ICE conducts vehicle stops,” the department said. “ALL officers have always received vehicle stop training.”

In 2025, the DHS cut training time requirements for ICE’s academy by approximately 40 percent, including cuts to driving and firearms training. The cuts came ahead of a hiring spree that added about 12,000 people to ICE’s ranks to meet the Trump administration’s deportation goals.

The recent amendments to ICE’s vehicle stops policy marks the third time this summer that department and ICE leadership ordered Enforcement and Removal Operations officials to change how they engage with vehicles. Previously, ICE halted and then amended its policy after immigration officers shot and killed two men during traffic stops in Texas and Maine in July. These orders were also challenged by official government social media channels.

“There’s clearly a disconnect between leadership on the ground level and what’s coming out of Washington” said one official. “It’s a total shitshow.”

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Then, on Thursday, October 8, plainclothes ICE officers opened fire on a vehicle during a targeted enforcement operation in New York City. At least seven rounds were fired into the car, according to reports. The driver, a 28-year-old Dominican man, was struck in the neck as his 5-year-old son sat in the backseat.

“The footage looks like a carjacking, they fucked up again,” said another Homeland Security Investigations official after reviewing video of the incident. “ERO was never given the freedom to work like they have in the past 2 years. They were always much more restrictive with their general enforcement.”

“Now comes these free-for-all mandates, and these guys who weren’t used to ‘enforcement’ and dealing with the public who were thrust into this world. Couple that with no tactical training — disaster.”

The post Inside ICE, Officials Question String of Trump Admin “Midterm Panic Moves” appeared first on The Intercept.