U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to be hitting pause.
The agency has reportedly ordered officers nationwide to stand down on most vehicle stops, multiple law enforcement sources say — with one exception: operations targeting serious criminal offenders. Everyone else is on hold while agents go through updated training on the tactic.
‘Numbers are going down, we can’t do s**t.’
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed the pause, or the reasoning behind it, in an on-the-record statement.
An ICE spokesperson told Blaze News that the agency is “always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets,” adding, “We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”
The directive doesn’t appear to be a written policy. Three Homeland Security sources told the Daily Wire they were simply informed “no more vehicle stops for now.”
CNN, citing a source familiar with the guidance, reported that it applies to agents under Enforcement and Removal Operations, ICE’s arrest-and-deportation branch, and pauses their ability to initiate stops — pushing officers toward other tactics for routine immigration enforcement and requiring coordination with partner agencies to pull over someone wanted on a criminal warrant.
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RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
One agency source, frustrated by the impact on arrest numbers, told the Daily Wire: “Numbers are going down, we can’t do s**t.”
The timing traces back to two shootings in the last week. Last Tuesday, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a vehicle stop. ICE claims he rammed a law enforcement vehicle and tried to run down an officer.
Six days later, on Monday, agents in Biddeford, Maine, shot and killed a man identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national. ICE confirmed that the deceased was an illegal alien with a final removal order, but whether he was the intended target of the operation is unclear.
In its statement on the Maine shooting, the DHS said the man “attempted to flee the scene” and that, “fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
RELATED: ICE confirms man shot and killed in Maine was illegal alien who had received order of deportation
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Maine Sen. Angus King (I), who was briefed by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, told CNN, “We haven’t seen evidence” yet that the officer feared for his safety or anyone else’s, and he pushed for a transparent investigation.
The two deaths add to a string of violent encounters ICE says its officers are facing — the DHS has cited a more than 1,300% increase in assaults on its officers — as the agency’s deportation operations have expanded under the Trump administration.
Vehicle stops have been one of ICE’s primary tools for locating and arresting targets away from homes and workplaces. Pulling back on that tactic, even temporarily, could slow arrest numbers in the near term.
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