The Trump administration has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to halt most vehicle stops while carrying out operations across the country, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about the directive.
The order comes after ICE officers killed two people over the past week in Houston and the coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, amid a recent surge in immigration arrests. Both were shot after agents tried to stop their vehicles, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The pause on vehicle stops could hamper the agency’s ability to increase arrests as it faces increasing pressure to deliver on the president’s promise of mass deportations. But it comes as some influential lawmakers and state officials have demanded answers about the latest shootings.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who is running for re-election this year, said in a statement on Tuesday that the shooting in Biddeford raised important questions, and that she had urged Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
The White House referred a request for comment to ICE, which said in a statement that the agency would not discuss law enforcement tactics.
At least 22 people have been fired on by agents involved in Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown since he took office for his second term in January 2025. Six people, including three U.S. citizens, have been killed as a result of those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing at people in vehicles.
In Houston last week, ICE agents shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the city for more than three decades, during a traffic stop while he was driving to work with several passengers. He was not the intended target of the ICE operation, federal officials acknowledged, after initially saying he was.
In Maine, ICE agents shot and killed a Colombian man early Monday, also in his vehicle. He was identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, according to a spokesman for Senator Angus King of Maine. A statement from the Homeland Security Department was unclear about whether Mr. Guerrero was the person that agents had been seeking.
Federal officials said the two men attempted to flee the traffic stops, although they did not provide video or other evidence to support those accounts. In several other immigration enforcement shootings, videos have later emerged that contradicted the agency’s narrative, and in at least one of those cases, an agent who fired on a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis now faces state charges.
The renewed deportation effort in recent weeks has lacked the fanfare of previous high-profile enforcement surges, including in Minneapolis in January, during which two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed. On Monday, a county prosecutor in Minneapolis said the Justice Department had turned over evidence in those shootings to state investigators after months of stonewalling.
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