President Donald Trump reportedly erupted at Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin after an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership call leaked suggesting the agency was quietly scaling back arrests to focus only on immigrants with criminal records, according to CNN sources familiar with the fallout.
Trump moved fast to shut down any perception of a policy shift, calling a well-known Fox News host directly to insist ICE’s approach hadn’t changed and agents would continue picking up anyone living in the country without legal status, criminal record or not. But privately, sources say he directed real fury at Mullin, even as DHS officially denies any such directive was ever issued.
The confusion traced back to a weekend call where agency leadership gave ICE agents spoken instructions that seemed to de-emphasize so-called “collateral arrests,” meaning people detained simply for being near an actual target, in favor of concentrating on people with criminal histories. According to three people with knowledge of the call, the ambiguous phrasing left agents unsure how to actually apply it in the field.
Sources told CNN that Mullin has publicly maintained that anyone here illegally remains a candidate for removal, while privately favoring a pullback from the collateral-arrest approach. One source didn’t mince words about the growing rift.
“Mullin is definitely out of step with President Trump and the base on immigration,” the source said.
A Homeland Security spokesperson pushed back hard on any suggestion of internal division.
“We are all focused on delivering on the President’s mission to deport illegal aliens and are all the same page. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to sow division and create an illusion of chaos,” the spokesperson said, adding that “no one is off the table” and that anyone in the country illegally “will be arrested and deported.”
But the episode isn’t an isolated one. Trump reportedly blew up earlier this summer over a temporary pause on ICE vehicle stops following fatal shootings in Texas and Maine, a decision he ultimately reversed after backlash from his own base.
Mullin, who took over DHS just six months ago after Trump fired predecessor Kristi Noem, has also faced criticism from Republicans uneasy about who exactly is being swept up in enforcement actions. Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar broke publicly with the administration in a campaign ad citing statistics showing half of July’s ICE detainees had no criminal record, while Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall complained that ICE activity in his state disrupted local communities and businesses without adequate coordination with local law enforcement.
Arrest numbers have climbed sharply regardless of the internal confusion. ICE booked close to 51,000 people in August alone, breaking a record set just a month earlier when more than 46,000 people were taken into custody in July.
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