Trump says ICE won’t halt traffic stops after shootings
US President Donald Trump said federal immigration agents would not suspend vehicle stops, a day after authorities announced a temporary halt after agents fatally shot two people during traffic stops in Texas and Maine.
“We must be strong, resilient, and smart, and we cannot give up on one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools: TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote in his social media post:
His remarks contradicted an announcement by administration officials on Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had ordered its officers to suspend most vehicle stops across the country following two murders in a week.
The agency’s aggressive tactics are once again under scrutiny Monday after an ICE officer killed a Colombian driver in the Maine coastal town of Biddeford, about 15 miles south of Portland.
Six days earlier, another ICE officer in Houston fatally shot a Mexican citizen.
In both incidents, agents attempted to stop the drivers, even though authorities acknowledged they were not targets of the operations.
“This is not a policy change, it’s a temporary pause,” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said in an interview with Fox News Channel on Tuesday.
“This will be a short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.”
The back-to-back shootings sparked protests in Maine, Houston and Boston and raised questions about ICE agents’ lack of body cameras.
Federal authorities have offered no evidence to support claims that the man posed a threat to ICE agents or the public at large that would justify using deadly force to stop them.
In other cases involving violent encounters, initial statements from immigration enforcement officials are contradicted by video or other evidence.
At least seven people have been shot and killed during federal immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when Trump launched mass deportations after returning to office following campaign promises to crack down on immigration.
Immigrant arrests have increased in the United States in recent weeks, even as the administration has moved away from the broad street sweeps that characterized previous crackdowns in Democratic-led cities and toward more targeted operations.
These heavy-handed tactics have come under intense criticism, especially after the shooting deaths of two US citizens in Minnesota earlier this year.
The Maine driver, 25-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran, was a Colombian with a wife and a three-year-old daughter.
He was granted a permit to work in the United States, according to immigration advocates.
