Donald Trump said on Wednesday morning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should continue making traffic stops, just one day after the homeland security department (DHS) said they would be halting them in the wake of recent stops that left two men killed in the space of a week.
Federal officers across the US had been told to temporarily stop pulling drivers over on Tuesday, homeland security sources told the Guardian. That directive came after ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on 7 July and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. Both men were unarmed, neither was the intended target of the operation that killed him, and in both cases the agents involved wore no body camera to record what happened.
The president’s Wednesday declaration made no mention of either killing when he countermanded the order. In a Truth Social post, he insisted that “we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up 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.” He added that the partial rein in “won’t happen on my watch”.
The whiplash from the post rebukes his own homeland security department, which had just spent a day trying to contain the fallout from back-to-back killings. Trump used the moment to credit ICE with falling crime rates, repeated his inflated claim that “25,000,000 people” crossed the border unchecked under Joe Biden, and instructed agents to “keep those Crime Stat Records coming”. He concluded by telling officers they are “loved and respected in America” though no reassurance was offered to the families of the men they killed.
The DHS itself has struggled to settle on an explanation for its own order. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, described the pause as temporary, pending a review and possible retraining of agents, while a department spokesperson would say only that officials are “always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets” and would not discuss tactics.
Fox News reported the halt carved out an exception for “the most egregious criminal aliens”, meaning it was never the blanket ban Trump’s post implies he is fighting to prevent.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on whether the car stops would continue again, though in a past statement said “we will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics”.
Five of the 11 people shot dead by federal immigration officers since Trump’s second term began were in their vehicles at the time, and the DHS’s standard justification – that occupants had “weaponized” their vehicles against agents – has repeatedly been undercut by witness video.
In Houston, the men in Salgado’s van told their attorney no officer was ever in the vehicle’s path and that shots came from its sides. In Maine, Durán’s wife and young daughter, who was wearing pyjamas, reportedly witnessed the aftermath after he told agents he had tried to stop the car.
Civil rights groups have called both shootings extrajudicial killings. Lauren Bonds of the National Police Accountability Project said bystander footage from Maine showed “another extrajudicial public execution” and urged Congress to freeze ICE’s funding and narrow its jurisdiction. Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights went further, calling the pattern “state violence with the direct intent of terrorizing communities through fear, intimidation, and deadly violence”.
None of that appears to have registered with the Trump, who instead said that attempt to hold ICE accountable should be blamed on “Radical Left Dumocrats”.
“I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job,” he posted. “Keep those Crime Stat Records coming!”
