Trump tells ICE to continue traffic stops after shootings

President Donald Trump moved Wednesday to preserve ICE traffic stops as an enforcement tool, overruling a one-day-old Homeland Security directive that had temporarily paused most such stops after immigration agents fatally shot two unarmed men in vehicles within a week.

Federal officers had been told Tuesday to stop pulling over drivers while officials reviewed the tactic. Trump reversed course in a Truth Social post, saying Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not give up what he called “one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

“Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands,” Trump wrote. He urged officers to be “judicious, fair and smart” and to “go back and do your very important job.”

The pause followed the July 7 fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national, during a vehicle stop in Houston, and the fatal shooting Monday in Biddeford, Maine, of a 25-year-old Colombian national identified by Al Jazeera as Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero and by The Guardian as Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. The Department of Homeland Security has said both men were in the United States without documentation, but acknowledged neither was the intended target of the deportation operations that led to their deaths.

In both cases, the officers involved were not wearing body cameras. Federal authorities have not publicly released evidence supporting claims that either man posed a threat warranting deadly force.

DHS initially told Maine Senator Angus King that an officer fired after Duran Guerrero tried to use his vehicle as a weapon, Al Jazeera reported. The department later said publicly only that he tried to flee and that an officer, “fearing for public safety,” opened fire. The FBI and Maine authorities are investigating the shooting.

In Houston, DHS said the officer fired after Salgado Araujo “weaponised” his vehicle. Witnesses and family members have disputed that account. The Guardian reported that men in Salgado’s van told their attorney no officer was in the vehicle’s path and that shots came from the sides of the van.

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, described the pause as temporary and said it would allow for a review and possible retraining. “It’s not a policy change. It’s a temporary pause,” Homan told Fox News on Tuesday. “This is going to be a short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.” He said officers would continue making arrests using other tactics.

Fox News reported the halt included an exception for “the most egregious criminal aliens.” ICE has said it has increasingly relied on vehicle stops as more immigrants avoid arrest by refusing to leave their homes.

The shootings have prompted protests in Maine, Houston and Boston and renewed scrutiny of ICE’s use of force as the agency expands under Trump. According to a tally by The Associated Press cited by Al Jazeera, at least 10 people have been killed during federal immigration enforcement operations since Trump returned to office in January 2025, and at least four of those deaths involved vehicles. The Guardian reported that five of 11 people shot dead by federal immigration officers during Trump’s second term were in vehicles at the time.

Maine Senator Susan Collins urged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to suspend “all nonurgent vehicle stops,” she said Tuesday. In a statement to The Guardian, Mullin said: “Our #1 goal is to keep our officers safe and get criminals OFF our streets.”

“Illegal aliens will be arrested and deported wherever they are,” he said. “If you are here illegally, LEAVE NOW.”