<\/p>\n
Orders for what<\/span> one official called a \u201cnational no enforcement day\u201d began circulating on Monday inside U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n Handed down through ICE\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were told all operations are canceled for Election Day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cWe were told all operations are canceled for Election Day,\u201d said one ICE immigration official, who operates in the south and requested anonymity to protect their livelihood. \u201cWord of mouth from our first-line supervisors, no official email notice.\u201d<\/p>\n According to multiple ICE officials who spoke to The Intercept, the orders were handed down quietly to avoid media attention.<\/p>\n \u201cYesterday was the least amount of activity observed from ICE ERO throughout the entire year so far,\u201d said Sherman Austin, the creator<\/a> of StopICE.net<\/a>, a crowdsourced platform tracking reported ICE activity<\/a> across the United States. \u201cYou can kind of tell like from the morning. Usually, ICE gets started really early, and there\u2019s a huge spike in activity between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. That spike wasn\u2019t there on Election Day.\u201d<\/p>\n Another ICE official, who works in the Great Lakes region, confirmed the orders ahead of Election Day, referring to it as \u201cNational No Enforcement Day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were told to do \u2018admin\u2019 shit,\u201d the official said. They said that ICE deportation officers who regularly do street-level operations were diverted to administrative office work: \u201cI\u2019ll be drinking coffee at the office for the first time in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n In total, ICE officials working in four areas of responsibility \u2014 ICE\u2019s jurisdictional regions \u2014 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\u201cSomething Unusual Was Going On\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n