WASHINGTON —U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will continue making arrests during vehicle stops after President Trump said on Wednesday that the agency “CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important an effective Crime Fighting tools.”
Following two recent fatal shootings by immigration officers, Department of Homeland Security leaders on Tuesday had ordered a pause on vehicle stops pending a review of the incidents and training for agents.
Vehicle stops by ICE have come under criticism not just from immigrant advocates, but from leading police officials and experts, who say ICE is ignoring best practices in policing.
But on Wednesday, Trump overturned the suspension, the White House confirmed. Giving up traffic stops, Trump wrote on Truth Social, means “playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
“The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch,” he added. “I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”
The shift away from traffic stops came a day after an ICE officer fatally shot a Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, and a week after an ICE officer fatally shot another man in Houston. Both were driving at the time of the shootings, which extended a fresh wave of criticism over the agency’s enforcement tactics that many condemned earlier this year after the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
The man killed in Maine was Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26. Last week Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old from Mexico, was killed in Houston.
The Department of Homeland Security alleged that in both incidents, the men resisted arrest and said that the officers fired their weapons defensively as the men attempted to flee. Neither man was the intended target of the ICE officers. In both instances, the officers involved were not wearing body cameras.
Similar scenes have played out since Trump administration officials began demanding an increase in immigration arrests as they try to carry out his promise of mass deportations.
In at least four deadly cases, federal officers confronted drivers and said they fired their weapons after the driver used their vehicle in a threatening manner. At least 10 people have been killed during immigration operations since the start of the Trump administration.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) critiqued the president’s statement Wednesday and called on Congress to enact ICE reforms.
“There’s nothing ‘judicious, fair and smart’ about murdering a father in front of his 3-year old-daughter,” she wrote on X. “ICE has fatally shot 10 people, and Trump is cheering them on.”
In the Los Angeles Police Department and most other major police departments across the country, officers are prohibited from shooting at a moving vehicle unless the driver has a gun or some other weapon — separate from the vehicle itself — that threatens the officer’s life.
Former LAPD Chief Michel Moore said he was encouraged when Homeland Security officials halted immigration agents from conducting traffic stops pending a review, because it appeared they were finally acknowledging that the tactics being used by their agents were causing tragic and entirely avoidable outcomes.
Seeing Trump slam that decision, Moore said, was disappointing.
“It’s unfortunate and really not sustainable,” he said.
LAPD officers are trained to avoid placing themselves in physical danger, including by avoiding standing in the path of a vehicle they have stopped. Such policies not only prevent unnecessary police shootings, but keep officers and the general public safe, Moore said.
“If you do shoot and strike the person behind the wheel, now this [vehicle] becomes an uncontrolled missile, which can increase the danger to the officers and to the general public,” he said. “It’s an escalation, as opposed to a deescalation.”
Moore said any responsible police or military agency experiencing a string of deadly incidents like those involving immigration agents would pause to conduct a review, learn from their mistakes and update policies to avoid repeating them.
“If a police chief had this number of officer-involved shootings, they would take a step back, say let’s review our policy. They wouldn’t simply continue,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a policing think tank in Washington that has advised the Justice Department and major police agencies nationwide.
Wexler said immigration officials need to revisit their own policy for such stops, not only because it is failing but also because its limits are unclear, which is unfair to agents.
Ryan Schwank, a former instructor at the ICE Academy within the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, said the deaths resulting from traffic stops are both an operational and training failure. He is a whistleblower who resigned in February after revealing that the Trump administration had slashed immigration officer training.
Schwank said the decision to pause traffic stops showed that agency leaders realized something is “fundamentally wrong.” ICE recruits are taught in the training academy to stand away from “crush zones” — the areas between two vehicles where movement could put them in danger.
One class in the ICE academy teaches recruits when and where to fire their weapons. Schwank said instructors and trainees would discuss what could be behind a target, because bullets travel.
“They know better — they’ve been trained not to do that,” he said of immigration agents. “We’ve now seen them do it again and again.”
ICE’s policy is not to conduct vehicle chases. “Which means that when someone starts to drive away, you’re not supposed to pursue them, you’re sure as hell not supposed to shoot them,” Schwank said.
He said that, in the past, ICE arrests would unfold at a slower pace: Officers typically would spend a few days researching, gathering intelligence and staking someone out so they could make an arrest in the safest way possible.
Now, there’s pressure to arrest people quickly and aggressively, he said.
On Tuesday, Tom Homan, a top White House immigration official, said the pause wouldn’t affect ICE arrests because officers could still make an arrest before someone gets into their vehicle or after they arrive at their destination.
Homan said the decision to pause most vehicle stops was made by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and top ICE leadership.
A day later, Mullin said immigrants lacking legal status “will be arrested and deported wherever they are.”
He said attempts to evade arrest are dangerous, and blamed politicians in cities and states with so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local police and federal immigration officers.
Mullin called out Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for issuing “multilingual flyers and online resources advising illegal aliens on how to evade arrest.” He also called out California Gov. Gavin Newsom for releasing similar guides and implementing sanctuary laws.
Advocates of immigrant rights have advised people not to open their doors unless ICE produces a warrant signed by a judge instead of the administrative warrants the agency generally uses.
Traffic stops are one workaround for ICE.
Schwank lamented that Trump robbed the agency of an opportunity to figure out how to conduct traffic stops more safely.
“Their priority isn’t officer safety or public safety, it’s the arrest cycle,” he said. “They want their numbers.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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