ICE is tightening the leash on its own agents. Following several shootings tied to traffic enforcement, the agency has moved to limit vehicle stops and ban high-speed chases outright, according to Voz.

Translation for anyone who hasn't worked the road: agents are being told to back off instead of pushing a stop when things go sideways. If a vehicle takes off, the old playbook said pursue. The new playbook says let him run and pick him up later. Vehicle stops, meanwhile, will get more scrutiny and tighter rules on when they're justified in the first place.

I'll be blunt about my bias here. Twenty-six years in the Border Patrol, and I watched the pursuit rules get tighter every administration. Every time. The pattern never changes: something goes bad, a shooting or a crash, headquarters writes new restrictions, and the guys on the ground end up working with one hand behind their backs. The count suffers. Aliens learn fast that a gas pedal beats a traffic stop, and word travels through every stash house in the sector within a week.

That said, I'm not going to pretend the agency had a choice here. When shootings stack up, the lawyers come in, the inspectors general come in, and somebody upstairs starts rewriting the use-of-force manual with a red pen. Better the agency polices itself than a federal judge does it for them, because we've all watched judges run ICE by injunction, and that's a uglier way to get there.

Where the line lands is the open question. A ban on high-speed chases through a school zone at 3 p.m. is common sense. A blanket rule that lets every illegal alien with a valid driver's instincts simply drive away is an escape hatch with four wheels on it. The difference between those two policies is everything, and it'll be decided in the fine print nobody outside the agency reads.

There's also a practical middle path the agency has used before: let the vehicle go, then work the case. License plate, surveillance, a warrant weeks later at 5 a.m. Slower. Quieter. It pads out the timeline on the arrest stats. But it puts the alien in custody eventually, and nobody gets shot on the shoulder of a highway. If the new restrictions come with the resources to run those follow-up cases, the count holds. If they don't, agents will be writing a lot of reports about vehicles that got away.

Watch the monthly arrest numbers over the next two quarters. They'll tell you whether this was a course correction or a slowdown dressed up as one. The numbers always tell you. They're the only witnesses that never lie.