Donald Trump moved swiftly to reverse a temporary halt on immigration enforcement traffic stops, issuing a blunt Wednesday morning declaration that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents must continue the practice despite two fatal shootings in recent days.
The directive caught his own Department of Homeland Security mid-damage control. Federal officers had been ordered to pause traffic stops on Tuesday following back-to-back killings by ICE agents. On July 7, officers fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston. Less than a week later, on Monday, agents killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Both men were unarmed, neither was the intended target of the respective operations, and in both incidents the agents involved wore no body cameras.
Trump's response sidestepped those facts entirely. In a Truth Social post, he framed the traffic stop as a nonnegotiable tool of law enforcement. "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," he wrote, warning that relinquishing it "won't happen on my watch."
The president used the moment to credit ICE with falling crime rates and rehash claims about border crossings under his predecessor. He instructed agents to "keep those Crime Stat Records coming" and assured them they are "loved and respected in America." No acknowledgment came regarding the families of the men killed.
DHS had struggled to articulate its own reasoning for the pause. Border czar Tom Homan called it temporary, pending a review and possible retraining, while a department spokesperson offered only that officials are "always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets." Fox News reported the halt included exceptions for what officials deemed the "most egregious criminal aliens," meaning it was never the blanket suspension Trump's post portrayed.
The shootings have drawn sharp rebuke from civil rights advocates. The National Police Accountability Project cited bystander footage from Maine as evidence of an "extrajudicial public execution." The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights characterized the pattern as "state violence with the direct intent of terrorizing communities through fear, intimidation, and deadly violence."
In Houston, witnesses told an attorney that occupants of Salgado's van were never in an officer's path and that shots originated from the vehicle's sides. The agency's standard justification, that occupants had "weaponized" their vehicles, has been contradicted repeatedly by video evidence. In Maine, Durán's wife and young daughter, who was in pajamas, witnessed the aftermath after he told agents he attempted to stop the car.
Since Trump's second term began, federal immigration officers have shot dead eleven people. Five were inside vehicles at the time.
Author James Rodriguez: "Trump's rush to reverse the pause looks less like policy leadership and more like a reflex to avoid looking soft on immigration, regardless of what the video evidence actually shows."
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