ICE suspends traffic stops in wake of Maine fatal shooting, border czar says

BIDDEFORD, Maine – The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has ordered its officers to suspend most vehicle stops around the country, after agents fatally shot two men six days apart during traffic stops in Texas and Maine, officials said on July 14.

The shift in arrest tactics, which US President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, called a “temporary pause” in vehicle stops, was implemented one day after an ICE agent killed a driver from Colombia in the coastal Maine town of Biddeford, about 24km south of Portland.

It came one week after a similar deadly shooting of a Mexican national by an ICE officer in Houston.

Although both the men shot were characterised by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), parent agency of ICE, as being “illegal aliens”, DHS officials have acknowledged neither was the intended target of deportation operations that led to their demise.

No video footage of either shooting has surfaced, and federal authorities have offered no evidence to support contentions that either man posed a threat to ICE agents or the public at large justifying the use of lethal force to stop them.

The back-to-back incidents brought to at least seven the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when Trump returned to office and launched a campaign of mass deportations.

Since the beginning of June, ICE arrests in Maine have more than quadrupled to around 70 per day in early July, according to internal ICE data shared with Reuters by a source.

The shooting in Maine sparked immediate protests on July 13, and further demonstrations were taking place on July 14.

‘Temporary pause’

“It’s not a policy change, it’s a temporary pause,” Homan said of the vehicle-stop suspension in an interview on the Fox News Channel on July 14. “This is going to be a short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.” He added that officers had other options for taking people into custody besides stopping them in their vehicles.

DHS asserted in a statement nearly 12 hours after the shooting on July 13 that an ICE officer “fearing for public safety” opened fire when the driver attempted to flee.

Officials have not explained how the driver might have posed a threat that would justify the shooting. According to ICE policy, officers may use deadly force only when there is “imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death to the officer or to another person” and is not authorised “solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect”.

US Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, told reporters that the agents involved were not wearing body cameras.

DHS said the agents were surveilling the last known address of someone with a final order of removal from the country, and followed a car they saw departing the residence. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin later told King that the driver of that car – the man killed in the shooting – was not the target of the operation, according to a spokesperson for the senator.

Immigration advocates said the person shot was a 26-year-old man from Colombia who was authorised to work in the US. Colombian President Gustavo Petro in a post on social media platform X identified the man killed as Johan Sebastian Duran.

“He was killed because he was believed to be an inferior being with no rights,” Petro wrote, adding that he expected Colombia’s foreign service in the US to take the “swiftest possible” actions to hold those responsible accountable.

Duran, who grew up in Bucaramanga, Colombia, had a partner and a young daughter and worked two jobs, including food delivery, the Portland Press Herald reported. Neighbours told the newspaper that his partner and daughter witnessed the aftermath of the shooting and could be heard crying in the street.

‘I tried to stop’

One eyewitness, Daniel Boucher, 71, who lives in downtown Biddeford, told Reuters he heard what sounded like firecrackers on the morning of July 13, rushed to the window and saw a white SUV ram a smaller white car.

Boucher said he then saw an ICE officer emerge from the SUV and pull out the car’s driver, who had blood on his face and head.

“I remember hearing the victim say, ‘But I tried to stop,’” Boucher said, before the man appeared to stop breathing.

The Maine Attorney-General’s office said it was investigating the shooting alongside local, state and federal authorities.

Houston shooting

The shooting came six days after an ICE agent in Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End fatally shot a 52-year-old man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, after a traffic stop during an immigration enforcement operation. Salgado was not the target of the operation, a DHS official has said.

ICE said in a statement that Salgado, a Mexican national living in the US illegally for over three decades, rammed a law enforcement vehicle with his van and attempted to run down an officer who fired in self-defence.

The agency offered no evidence to support its account. In similar instances over the past year, initial ICE and DHS statements about the use of force have been contradicted by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.

Three men who were riding in Salgado’s van have disputed ICE’s narrative, according to a lawyer for two of the men.

Arrests of immigrants have surged in recent weeks, even as the Trump administration has moved away from broad sweeps in Democratic-led cities. Those operations were widely criticised as violent and heavy-handed after two US citizens were killed in January by federal agents in Minnesota. REUTERS