President Donald Trump has said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should continue traffic stops after recent fatal shootings, despite a new directive to halt them.
Yesterday, Trump administration officials told ICE officers to suspend most vehicle stops, a change in directive triggered after an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian driver on Monday in Maine and another shot and killed a Mexican motorist in Houston a week earlier, renewing criticism of the agency’s enforcement tactics that were widely condemned last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.
The nation’s border czar, Tom Homan, characterized the change in traffic stops as a “short pause” rather than a broader administration policy change, and said that ICE could do its job in other ways in the interim. However, a day later, Trump argued that the stops are essential for cracking down on illegal immigration and doesn’t want them to stop.
Trump noted in a social media post today that ICE is “doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done.” The US President said that to remove criminals he says were let into the country under the previous Democratic administration “we must be strong, tough and smart and we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump added, “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
Durán Guerrero, a man from Colombia, was killed on Monday morning in Biddeford, Maine, the state’s sixth-largest city, situated on the Atlantic Coast. He was authorized to work in the US and had been issued a Social Security number, according to the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition.
The Department of Homeland Security said the ICE officer opened fire after “fearing for public safety” as Durán Guerrero “attempted to flee the scene” in his vehicle. DHS has not provided details on why the officer believed Durán Guerrero posed a threat.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was killed July 7 in Houston. His family said that he had been driving to work with three other construction crew members when unmarked vehicles carrying federal agents began following his van.
DHS said that Salgado Araujo rammed into a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow several verbal commands before an ICE agent fired his weapon in self-defense. The agency said that he attempted to evade arrest during the “targeted operation,” though a source with preliminary details about the incident said he was not the target of the enforcement action.
Two men who were with Salgado Araujo disputed the government’s account, saying the agents’ vehicles bumped into them and then swayed into the van, forcing them to stop. The agents never identified themselves, the men told Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra and Rep. Sylvia Garcia.
In Florida on Tuesday, a third man in roughly a week died during an encounter with immigration officers. This time, a 28-year-old man was killed after he was hit by a tractor trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.
These are incidents that have been repeated again and again since the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown began, with federal officers confronting drivers then saying they opened fire when their vehicles became a danger. That’s despite decades of warnings from policing experts that shooting into moving cars presents a danger of its own and should almost always be avoided.
At least 10 people have been killed during immigration operations since the start of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. At least four of those deaths involved people in vehicles, including one last week in Houston, a trend so troubling that US Senator Susan Collins said yesterday that she urged DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin “to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
John Sandweg, who was Acting Director at ICE, which is part of DHS, during the Obama administration, estimated recently that there have been roughly 18 traffic-stop shootings during the Trump immigration crackdown.
Multiple Investigations Underway
Meanwhile, multiple investigations were underway. In Maine, local officials have asked for a full and impartial probe. The Maine Attorney General is investigating the shooting alongside local and federal authorities.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Senator Susan Collins of Maine that the agency’s Office of Inspector General’s Boston field office has since taken over the investigation.
In Houston, the DHS’ Office of Inspector General is now leading an investigation into the shooting, according to ICE. And the FBI’s Houston field office is investigating the alleged assault on a federal law enforcement officer. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare’s office has also launched its own investigation into the killing of Salgado Araujo and the Houston Police Department has asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to conduct an investigation, saying doing so “will ensure it is independent and transparent.”
