A day after the Trump administration suspended most vehicle stops by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents amid blowback over two fatal officer-involved shootings, President Trump directed the agency to continue the practice, calling it “one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.”
Trump argued that doing away with vehicle stops would be “playing right into the criminal’s [sic] hands.”
“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch,” he wrote. “ICE, be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”
Trump’s directive reverses a DHS policy change that briefly limited civil arrests through the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. Under the short-lived policy change, enforcement and removal agents were prevented from making vehicle stops while they receive updated training on tactics.
The change came after ICE agents fatally shot a Columbian man in Biddeford, Maine on Monday. According to the agency, the man was attempting to flee from an address where agents had been directed to serve a final removal order.
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon”, ICE said, adding “the driver of the vehicle was struck.”
Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) shared in a post on X that she spoke with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin following the shooting and “urged him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops in the wake of yesterday’s deadly Biddeford shooting.”
“I am encouraged that the Department has agreed to do so,” the senator wrote.
Maine Senator Angus King shared that the victim in the Maine shooting, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, was not the target of the operation.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the victim who was shot during the vehicle stop in Maine was not the target of the operation in a post on X.
Senator Angus King asked that Secretary Mullin launch an investigation into ICE tactics on Monday.
“I called on DHS Secretary Mullin to launch a full, fair, and transparent investigation—and I’m going to hold him to his word there will be one,” King said on X.
Following the shooting in Maine, hundreds gathered in Biddeford to protest.
The shooting came less than one week after an ICE agent shot a Mexican national during a traffic stop in Houston, Texas. ICE agents stopped 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last week while he was driving to work because they saw “a white van with an individual who resembled the target” of an operation. ICE says its officer shot at Araujo in self defense when Araujo allegedly rammed an ICE vehicle. However, Araujo was not the man ICE was looking for.