Trump: Stopping ICE from making traffic stops is ‘playing right into the criminal’s hands’

Civil rights organizations and communities are pushing back after a second person was shot by U.S. immigration agents this week. Joy Malbon reports.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to keep pulling over vehicles, signaling his opposition Wednesday to plans announced just a day earlier to suspend most traffic stops following another string of fatal shootings.

It’s not clear whether ICE will quickly reverse course and resume most stops, which have been a key tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Ending those stops, Trump wrote, would be “playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

“We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote Wednesday on his social media site.

Hours after Trump made his views known, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued his own statement saying people illegally in the country would be “arrested and deported wherever they are.” But Mullin didn’t say whether ICE officers will be allowed to carry out traffic stops.

ICE’s enforcement tactics are coming under renewed criticism after three people died during encounters with federal officers within roughly a week. In Florida, a 28-year-old man was killed Tuesday after he was hit by a tractor trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.

Before that, two motorists were shot and killed by ICE officers -- one in Texas last week and another in Maine on Monday.

After the Maine killing, Trump administration officials told ICE officers to suspend most vehicle stops, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.

Since the immigration crackdown began, federal officers confronting drivers have opened fire several times, saying the drivers’ vehicles had posed a danger. Policing experts have long said that shooting into moving cars presents a danger of its own and should almost always be avoided.

There have been at least 10 deaths involving encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched his deportation campaign. At least four of them involved people in vehicles, a trend so troubling that U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Tuesday that she had urged Department of Homeland Security leaders “to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

ICE has been under pressure to beef up arrest and deportation numbers. It says people being sought are increasingly staying in their homes, and it often blames immigration advocates who advise immigrants to stay in homes unless ICE produces a warrant signed by an independent judge.

ICE officers say that means they’re forced to find other ways to make arrests.

DHS says the man killed in Maine came to the U.S. illegally

Hundreds of people in Maine protested Tuesday over the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national. Advocacy groups said he was authorized to work in the United States.

Karolina Rojas, his partner and the mother of their young daughter, shared a photo on Instagram of the three hugging and smiling.

“I love you, my darling, my life. I love you. I have no words for this pain. You were my everything. Please watch over me. Help me find the strength to carry on. Stay with me always. Don’t leave me alone. I’m begging you, my love,” she wrote.

Duran Guerrero had illegally entered the U.S. on Sept. 1, 2023, through the southern border, DHS said Wednesday.

Sen. Angus King, I-Me., said the Homeland Security secretary told him on Monday that ICE officers were in Biddeford to serve an arrest warrant but that it wasn’t for the person who was shot.

DHS said agents were surveilling an address for a person with a final order of removal from the country.

When ICE tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone who came from that address, the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the department said.

In its statement Wednesday, DHS said Guerrero was released into the U.S. after crossing the border.

The department didn’t answer questions about the agent who shot him.

Photos showed bullet holes in Duran Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved in the shooting didn’t have body cameras, leaving many questions. Among them are how close the officer was to the vehicle when shooting, whether officers told Duran Guerrero to stop and why ICE believes he had put the public in danger.

Maine shooting puts a spotlight on ICE

In a scathing post on X, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.”

Petro, who has openly quarreled with Trump, urged Trump to provide an explanation and accused ICE officers of treating Duran Guerrero as “an inferior being without rights.”

In Wednesday’s social media post, Trump told ICE to be “judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”

Border czar Tom Homan told reporters Tuesday that the investigation needs to play out and that officers will be held accountable if they are found to have acted inappropriately or illegally.

The Associated Press