Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been instructed to immediately halt most vehicle stops during immigration enforcement operations across the country, an abrupt change that would leave in place only those stops tied to operations targeting the most serious criminal offenders. According to the account, the move applies nationwide and marks a significant, if temporary, pullback from a tactic that has repeatedly turned deadly in recent days.
The directive followed two killings in the space of a week. According to the account, two people were shot dead by ICE in separate incidents in Texas and Maine, both of which began as attempts to stop a vehicle during enforcement operations. The Department of Homeland Security has alleged that one of the two incidents involved a driver trying to ram an officer, an account that has been contradicted by witnesses and relatives who dispute that version of events.
Officials framed the step as a stopgap rather than a permanent shift. According to the account, the order came from the Department of Homeland Security's secretary, Mark Wayne Mullin, who directed the agency to halt most vehicle stops in the wake of the two shootings, with officers to receive new training on how such stops should be conducted before the pause is lifted. One of the state's senators said she had held three separate conversations with the secretary and had advised him to stop non-urgent traffic stops, arguing there were sufficient critical questions to justify bringing non-emergency stops to a halt.
The most recent death came in Maine, and the man killed has since been named. According to a spokesperson for a United States senator for the state, he was Juan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old whom immigration advocates identified as Colombian and whom a family friend described as a husband, a brother and the father of a three-year-old child. The senator's office said he was not the intended target of the operation, and advocates said he had a social security number, was authorised to work in the country and was on his way to work when he was shot on Monday morning in Biddeford, a city about 15 miles south of Portland. The senator said he had been told that none of the agents involved were wearing body cameras, while officials said the man had tried to flee during an attempted traffic stop and that, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.
That shooting came six days after a similar death in Texas. According to the account, a man was shot and killed by ICE agents in Houston in an incident that also began as a vehicle stop, with authorities there alleging that the victim had threatened agents with his vehicle, though they did not provide evidence to support that claim. Both cases have now become the focus of intense public scrutiny over how the agency conducts its operations.
The two deaths fit into a wider and increasingly contentious enforcement drive. According to the account, at least nine people have been killed during immigration enforcement operations under the second Trump administration, with at least five of them fatally shot, including United States citizens, at a time when the agency has been pushing to sharply increase the pace of arrests toward a target of around two thousand a day.
The killings have drawn people into the streets. According to the account, protests grew after the Maine shooting, with demonstrators gathering in the Biddeford area outside Portland and outside the office of one of the state's senators, holding signs demanding that agents leave their communities. Federal authorities, including the FBI, are leading the investigation into the Maine death, which unfolded in front of neighbours who described hearing several gunshots.
The order to stand down from most vehicle stops represents a rare and visible response to the mounting pressure. According to the account, it stops short of halting enforcement operations altogether, carving out an exception for those aimed at the most serious offenders, but it signals official concern over how frequently encounters that begin with a car being pulled over have ended in bloodshed on American streets.
The pause, however, did not hold for long. According to the account, President Donald Trump overturned the order and allowed ICE to resume vehicle stops, writing on social media that the country cannot give up on one of the agency's most important and effective crime-fighting tools, the traffic stop, and arguing that abandoning it would play right into the hands of criminals. The reversal came amid pushback from parts of his political base, and the border czar, Tom Homan, told reporters that the investigation into the shootings needed to play out and that officers would be held accountable if they were found to have acted inappropriately.
New details also emerged about the agent involved in the Maine shooting. According to the account, the officer had worked as a law enforcement officer with the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2017 but was described by multiple sources as new to ICE, a point that has fed into the wider debate over training and accountability. Officials have continued to defend the use of face coverings by agents in the field as a matter of safety, citing threats against officers, while critics argue that the masks make the process less transparent.