Two fatal shootings in six days. One dead in Houston, one dead in Maine. And then, within 24 hours of reports that federal immigration agents would stop conducting most vehicle stops, the White House said the opposite: the stops would continue.
The first death came in Houston, where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican citizen, was fatally shot after ICE said he tried to ram an officer with his vehicle during a traffic stop. The second came days later in Biddeford, Maine, where agents attempted to pull over a car driven by Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national who was not the target of any warrant. DHS said the vehicle "attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon" — Durán Guerrero was struck and later died. In both cases, DHS has not released video or other evidence to support its account, and in Houston, passengers in the vehicle have disputed it.
A policy shift that didn't survive a day
By Tuesday, July 14, the office of Maine Sen. Angus King told NPR that the Department of Homeland Security had confirmed it would pause most non-urgent vehicle stops. Sen. Susan Collins said she had personally called DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's successor, Secretary Mullin, urging him to "cease all non-urgent vehicle stops." Reporting from the Washington Post and TIME, citing sources familiar with internal guidance, described the pause as applying specifically to agents under ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division.
Two days later, the policy reversed in public view. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that ICE vehicle stops were continuing. President Trump had posted on Truth Social in the interim: "We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.'s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!" DHS, for its part, told NPR it would not "disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics" — leaving the actual, on-the-ground policy genuinely unclear even to reporters covering it closely.
Why traffic stops became the tool — and the flashpoint
Traffic stops had become central to ICE's operations this year as the agency pursued a Trump administration target of roughly 2,000 arrests a day, according to CNN reporting. A former ICE agent, speaking to TIME on condition of anonymity, said the agency's own training limited what stops were supposed to look like: "We weren't supposed to give chase to anyone [in a traffic stop] unless there's a fleeing felon." Whether that training was followed in Houston and Biddeford is now central to separate investigations opened in both states — investigations complicated, official reports note, by the fact that none of the agents involved were wearing body cameras. DHS told Fox News that was "due to back-to-back Democrat shutdowns."
What actually changed, in practice
As of this week, the practical answer is: it's not fully clear. Some reporting describes ICE quietly shifting emphasis toward home-based and workplace enforcement rather than vehicle stops, even as the White House publicly insists stops continue. What's undisputed is that two people are dead, two separate local investigations are underway with limited federal cooperation, and the agency's own account of both incidents remains the only version on record.