Donald Trump has said agents working for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should not give up traffic stops, which he has described as one of the agency’s “most important and effective Crime Fighting tools”.

The president’s intervention comes after ICE agents were told to halt most vehicle stops nationwide immediately, following two fatal shootings in Texas and Maine that involved ICE.

The planned suspension was seen as a significant tactical shift for the agency, which has faced criticism in the past year over allegations of excessive use of force and scrutiny over deaths that have occurred during its operations.

Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan said the move would be a temporary one.

Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Homan added that deportations would continue.

In the interview, Homan, who is an adviser to Trump, said that agents already had extensive vehicle-stop training.

Officers have only a few moments to react during stops and “every arrest is different”, he said.

The pause, Homan added, would be brief and would allow leadership to conduct a short-term review.

Trump expressed his opposition to giving up traffic stops in a social media post on Wednesday morning, without referring to Homan’s statement that the move would be temporary.

The president wrote: “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

Referring to the wider purpose of the agency’s operations, Trump added: “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades.”

The suspension reported on Tuesday was due to apply to most circumstances except cases involving serious criminal targets, according to US media reports that cited unnamed law enforcement sources.

Asked by the BBC for clarification on what constitutes official policy now and whether Trump’s post changes the reported internal memo, the Department of Homeland Security provided a statement from Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

“Illegal aliens will be arrested and deported wherever they are,” the statement said.

“We remind illegal aliens attempting to evade arrest is dangerous,” it added.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told the BBC News Channel that he was fearful more incidents like the recent fatal shootings would happen due to what he called “quotas” at ICE for deportations and arrests.

Durbin, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which oversees federal policing as well as immigration and criminal justice reform, said people at ICE “are not following the basic rules and principles when it comes to good policing”.

“Saying that they’re just going to adjust things is not enough,” the senator insisted. “This is creating a wave of terror and fear in our country. It is interfering with the lives of people who just want to be good citizens and good people.”

In one of the recent incidents, an ICE agent fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian national during an immigration enforcement operation in Maine.

The DHS said the officer, “fearing for public safety”, opened fire on the man when he attempted to flee the scene of the operation and after agents tried to stop his vehicle. The department did not specify the threat he posed.

The shooting took place in Biddeford, Maine, about 24km (15 miles) south of Portland.

Immigration advocates have said the man was authorised to work in the US and had a social security number.

He has not yet been officially named, but local lawmakers and neighbours identified him as Joan Sebastian Guerrero.

In another recent incident, another man – a Mexican national who had been living in the US for decades – was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Houston, Texas.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was stopped while driving to work and was killed shortly afterwards.

The DHS has said the stop was initiated because officers saw “a white van with an individual who resembled the target” of an operation. It has said the officer shot in self-defence and that Araujo was not the man ICE was looking for.

Passengers in the van and the victim’s family have disputed the department’s account and the agency’s legal watchdog has opened an investigation into the fatal shooting.

Both shootings in Maine and Texas have sparked protests.

They come after national demonstrations earlier this year following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Both US citizens, they were protesting when they were fatally shot in separate confrontations with ICE agents in January.

In another incident early on Tuesday, a person fleeing from federal immigration agents in St Augustine, Florida, was struck and killed by a tractor trailer, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

At least seven people have been killed in immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, according to Reuters. (BBC)

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