US president backs tactic regardless of company asserting non permanent pause after deadly shootings in Texas and Maine.
Revealed On 15 Jul 2026
Only a day after his administration introduced it was quickly pausing most ICE visitors stops following two fatal shootings, President Donald Trump is urging United States immigration brokers to maintain utilizing the tactic.
In a social media put up on Wednesday, Trump praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers for doing a “GREAT job” and argued that visitors stops stay one of many company’s only instruments because it carries out his mass deportation marketing campaign.
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“We have to be robust, robust, and sensible, and we CANNOT hand over certainly one of I.C.E.‘s most essential and efficient Crime Preventing instruments, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote. “As soon as we do, we’re enjoying proper into the prison’s palms.”
He additionally urged officers to be “considered, truthful and sensible” as they “return and do your crucial job”.
The feedback got here a day after Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, mentioned ICE was quickly suspending most visitors stops whereas it reviewed the observe after two lethal shootings inside every week.
“It’s not a coverage change. It’s a short lived pause,” Homan instructed Fox Information on Tuesday. “That is going to be a short-term evaluate to ensure ICE brokers are secure and doing the suitable factor.”
Homan mentioned officers would proceed making arrests utilizing different techniques whereas the evaluate was underneath means.
The evaluate was prompted by the deadly capturing on Monday of 25-year-old Colombian national Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero throughout an ICE operation in Biddeford, Maine.
The Division of Homeland Safety (DHS), which oversees ICE, initially instructed Maine Senator Angus King an officer fired after Duran Guerrero tried to make use of his automobile as a weapon. Later, the division publicly mentioned solely that Duran Guerrero had tried to flee and an officer, “fearing for public security”, opened fireplace.
The officers concerned weren’t sporting physique cameras, and the FBI and Maine authorities are investigating the capturing.
Six days earlier, an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, fatally shot 52-year-old Mexican nationwide Lorenzo Salgado Araujo throughout one other automobile cease. DHS mentioned the officer fired after Salgado Araujo “weaponised” his automobile, however witnesses and relations have disputed that account.
The Division of Homeland Safety has described each males as being within the US with out documentation however has acknowledged neither was the meant goal of the deportation operations that ended of their deaths.
Federal authorities haven’t publicly launched proof to help claims that both man posed a menace warranting the usage of lethal drive. Advocates have charged that Trump administration officers’ preliminary characterisations of comparable incidents, together with the killing of two US residents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January, have beforehand confirmed deceptive.
The back-to-back shootings have fuelled protests in Maine, Houston and Boston, Massachusetts, whereas elevating renewed questions on ICE’s use of drive and the company’s reliance on visitors stops. It has additionally raised questions over coaching because the company has sought to swiftly broaden its ranks underneath Trump.
In keeping with a tally by The Related Press information company, no less than 10 individuals have been killed throughout federal immigration enforcement operations since Trump launched his deportation marketing campaign after returning to workplace in January 2025. Not less than 4 of these deaths concerned automobiles.
John Sandweg, who served as appearing ICE director underneath former President Barack Obama, instructed AP there have been roughly 18 traffic-stop shootings throughout Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The pattern has prompted Maine Senator Susan Collins to induce Homeland Safety Secretary Markwayne Mullin to droop “all nonurgent automobile stops”, she mentioned on Tuesday.
ICE mentioned it has more and more relied on automobile stops as extra immigrants keep away from arrest by refusing to go away their properties.
The company has blamed immigration advocates, pointing to recommendation to immigrants to not open their doorways until officers produce a warrant signed by a choose fairly than the executive warrants ICE usually makes use of.
