WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.” While Mullin didn’t directly say whether ICE officers will be
allowed to carry out traffic stops, he later said in a statement that he
and Trump “are on the same page,” and that they want ICE officers “to
have all options available to keep them safe while executing our
mission.”
ICE’s enforcement tactics are coming under renewed criticism after three people died during encounters with federal officers within 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.
Policy change for ICE traffic stops
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 Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine
urged Department of Homeland Security leaders “to cease all non-urgent
vehicle stops.”
Two shootings in a week, she said Wednesday, “raise very serious
questions” and warrant a halt in that approach for the time being.
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 US illegally
More
protests are planned after hundreds gathered Tuesday to remember Johan
Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the 25-year-old Colombian national who was
shot in his car Monday.
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.
Durán
Guerrero illegally entered the U.S. on Sept. 1, 2023, through the
southern border, DHS said Wednesday. Advocacy groups said that when he
was killed, he was authorized to work in the U.S.
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, 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.
When
ICE tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone who came from a home
under surveillance, 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 Durán Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved didn’t have body cameras, leaving many questions.
Texas state police will investigate Houston shooting
Republican
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration
crackdown, said Wednesday that the state’s top law enforcement unit
would investigate the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in
Houston.
DHS’ account of the July 7 shooting is disputed
by three other men who were riding in a van with Salgado Araujo at the
time. A public viewing for Salgado Araujo, a homebuilder from Mexico,
was set for Thursday in Houston.
More than a week after
the shooting, new court records show the FBI is investigating if drugs
were found in the van, according to a search warrant application signed
by a federal judge Tuesday.
FBI special agent David
McNeilly stated in an affidavit that he observed four plastic bags of a
white substance appearing to be meth inside the van. DHS has not stated
that suspected drugs were the reason why ICE officers engaged in the
traffic stop. The FBI referred questions about the search warrant to the
U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, which did
not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The
ACLU of Texas, which is providing legal representation for Salgado
Araujo’s family, said the Trump administration “lacks credibility” to
investigate itself.
Maine shooting puts a spotlight on ICE
Outgoing
Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting of Durán Guerrero
in Maine a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.”
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 that the investigation needs to play out
and that officers will be held accountable if they are found to have
acted inappropriately or illegally.
Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, said ICE should be scrapped as a federal agency if it can’t be fixed.
Mills,
who has criticized ICE before, said Wednesday that the agency needs
changes “before more families are robbed of a loved one.”
___
Whittle
reported from Biddeford, Maine. Associated Press reporters Jack Brook
in New Orleans, Michael R. Sisak in New York, John Seewer in Toledo,
Ohio, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Elliot Spagat in Park
City, Utah, Anna Wilder in Austin, Texas, and Darlene Superville in
Washington contributed to this report.
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