President Donald Trump wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to keep pulling over vehicles, even after the agency moved to suspend most traffic stops following another string of fatal shootings. The order from the top landed Wednesday, and it put ICE’s street-level power back at the center of a crackdown already marked by death, fear and a growing pile of bodies.
The people paying for that machinery are the ones in cars, on roads, and in homes under surveillance. 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.
Who Gets Crushed
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, posted a photo on Instagram of the three hugging and smiling, then wrote a message that cut through the official language of enforcement and into the wreckage left behind.
“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.
What They Call Enforcement
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. That’s the language of the apparatus: a vehicle stop turned into a “tool,” a human being turned into a target, and a lethal encounter recast as crime fighting.
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 directly say whether ICE officers will be allowed to carry out traffic stops. The ambiguity matters less to the people already living under the threat of it than to the officials trying to manage the optics after the latest killings.
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.
That’s the logic of the system in plain clothes. The agency wants more bodies, more arrests, more deportations. When people try to protect themselves by staying inside unless a warrant comes from an independent judge, the agency treats that as an obstacle to be worked around.
Who Has the Power
ICE’s enforcement tactics are coming under renewed criticism after three people died during encounters with federal officers within a week. 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.
Trump, though, 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. That’s the familiar promise of oversight after the fact, offered once the damage is already done.
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.” The words land hard because the deaths keep coming while the machinery keeps moving.
Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting of Durán Guerrero a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.” Photos showed bullet holes in Durán Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved didn’t have body cameras, leaving many questions. In a system built on force, the missing footage speaks loudly.