U.S. Customs and Border Protection has scrapped a 2022 policy that authorized federal immigration officials to seek and accept private donations for illegal immigrants in custody, a move the agency says reflects the Trump administration's tougher enforcement stance.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott issued an internal memo withdrawing the agency from DHS Delegation 07107, Rev. 1, the directive that had empowered both CBP and ICE leadership to solicit, accept, and use gifts from private parties for the care of illegal immigrants held in federal facilities. The withdrawal took effect immediately, Fox News reported after obtaining the memo exclusively.

The original directive was signed on May 3, 2022, by then-Deputy Homeland Security Secretary John K. Tien. It granted the CBP commissioner and ICE director broad authority to solicit specific gifts tied to the care of illegal immigrants passing through federal custody. CBP officials told Fox News they only "recently discovered" the directive before moving to end the agency's participation.

That gap, a policy on the books for roughly three years before anyone flagged it, raises its own questions about oversight inside the sprawling DHS bureaucracy. No explanation was offered for how a formal delegation order escaped notice for so long.

Scott calls the policy unnecessary and out of step with Trump's border posture

In his memo, Scott laid out two reasons for pulling CBP out. First, the practical justification: border encounters and apprehensions have dropped sharply enough that CBP no longer needs outside donations to care for people in its custody.

Scott wrote that CBP originally sought the gift-acceptance authority because of the "elevated number of aliens encountered, processed and held" in its facilities at the time. That volume has since fallen dramatically under the current administration's enforcement-first approach, which has included surging ICE arrests and a crackdown on border releases.

Second, Scott pointed to a policy mismatch. The directive, he wrote, "does not align with the Trump administration's strengthened enforcement posture at our borders and related presidential actions issued by the administration."

Fox News reported Scott stating plainly in the memo:

"This delegation order is no longer needed or appropriate."

He added that the agency would continue caring for people in its custody the way any federal agency normally does, through congressional appropriations, not charity drives.

"CBP will continue to provide care for aliens in our custody through our normal appropriations."

ICE's status under the directive remains unclear

Scott's memo withdraws CBP from the delegation order, but it does not address ICE. The original 2022 directive covered both agencies equally, granting the ICE director the same solicitation and acceptance authority it gave the CBP commissioner. Whether ICE has taken separate action, or whether DHS plans to rescind the directive agency-wide, is not addressed in the memo or in CBP's statements to Fox News.

That leaves open the possibility that ICE could still technically operate under the Biden-era gift pipeline, even as CBP has formally walked away. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to intervene directly when agency-level decisions fall short of the president's enforcement goals. Earlier this year, Trump personally overruled his own DHS to reverse an ICE policy on vehicle pursuits, a signal that the White House expects alignment across the immigration enforcement apparatus.

A policy born of the Biden border crisis

The directive's origins tell their own story. By May 2022, CBP facilities along the southern border were overwhelmed. The Biden administration was processing and releasing illegal immigrants at a pace that strained federal resources. The gift-acceptance order was one bureaucratic answer to that strain, rather than demand more appropriations from Congress, DHS opened the door for private parties to donate goods directly to the agency for distribution to people in custody.

What types of gifts were solicited, who donated them, and in what quantities, none of that is disclosed in the memo or in CBP's public statements. The directive's full operational history during its roughly three-year lifespan remains opaque.

The broader enforcement landscape has shifted considerably. Courts have also cleared the way for more aggressive action at the border, including a Ninth Circuit ruling that freed Border Patrol to resume immigration stops in California.

Meanwhile, the operational tempo under the Trump administration has ramped up. Fatal incidents during ICE enforcement operations, including a man killed fleeing agents on a Florida highway, have drawn scrutiny but have not slowed the administration's push for tougher border and interior enforcement.

Taxpayers shouldn't have been subsidizing a gift pipeline in the first place

The Biden administration built a system that treated illegal immigration as a humanitarian logistics problem to be managed with private donations rather than a law-enforcement failure to be corrected. The 2022 directive was a quiet concession that federal resources couldn't keep up with the consequences of the administration's own border policies, so DHS opened a side channel and hoped no one would notice.

Scott's memo states the obvious: when you stop releasing people by the hundreds of thousands, you stop needing charity care packages to manage the overflow. The fact that CBP only "recently discovered" this directive after three years on the books is a reminder that the federal bureaucracy is littered with policies designed to accommodate illegal immigration rather than discourage it.

If the government has enough money to hold people in custody properly, it should use its own appropriations. If it doesn't, Congress should hear about it, not private donors looking to soften the edges of a broken system.