<\/p>\n
Internal orders handed<\/span> down by leaders at U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement instructed officers in the field to stop making vehicle stops, according to five ICE officials around the country.<\/p>\n The directive, handed down in at least three of ICE\u2019s administrative regions Monday and effective immediately, came after a pair of killings in Texas and Maine<\/a> by ICE agents that involved attempts to stop cars.<\/p>\n The ICE officers who spoke with The Intercept, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal orders, said the shift was meant to mitigate the chances of shootings like the ones that sparked outrage by taking the lives of two immigrants over the past week.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever these chucklefucks did in Maine and Houston is serious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cWe have been told to either grab them before they leave their parking spot, or follow them and arrest them where they stop (ie a gas station or place of work) to avoid these situations,\u201d said an ICE official from the South.<\/p>\n \u201cThis shit isn\u2019t normal,\u201d the official said. \u201cWhatever these chucklefucks did in Maine and Houston is serious.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The five officials who spoke to The Intercept about the directive all hail from ICE\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, which carries out most of the federal government\u2019s street immigration arrests. (ICE\u2019s Homeland Security Investigations<\/a>, the agency\u2019s criminal investigative arm, did not receive a directive about vehicle stops, according to two special agents.)<\/p>\n The directive to ICE\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations, which was first reported by the New York Times<\/a>, didn\u2019t come down as written orders, two of the ICE officials told The Intercept. <\/p>\n Instead, said one of the ICE officials who works in the Mountain West region, the order came down through field office directors to avoid red tape associated with putting an official policy in place.<\/p>\n Along with street arrests, vehicle stops<\/a> had become go-to tactic<\/a> for ICE in the second Trump administration, with ramped-up enforcement that has included crackdowns on large cities like Minneapolis. Under past administrations, including President Donald Trump\u2019s first term, ICE relied mostly on transfers from local jails and prisons to satisfy its enforcement priorities.<\/p>\n The vehicle stops also contributed to a recent explosion of immigrant detentions, with ICE announcing roughly 10,000 arrests<\/a> over a five-day period in late June 2026.<\/p>\n Ending the vehicle stops, said the ICE official based in the South, \u201cdefinitely hinders enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a recent period of less than a week, Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by ICE officers in Houston and Colombian national Joan Sebastian Guerrero was shot and killed<\/a> in Biddeford, Maine.<\/p>\n Details surrounding the shootings are still emerging, but Department of Homeland Security officials have said that neither Araujo nor Guerrero were the intended targets of the ICE enforcement operations that claimed their lives. The officers involved in the shootings were not wearing body cameras in either case.<\/p>\n The killings sparked public outrage and probes at both the state and local levels.<\/p>\n In addition to investigations by FBI and the Homeland Security Department\u2019s Office of the Inspector General, Maine\u2019s attorney general and the attorney general in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, launched investigations. Local police departments in both Maine and Texas are assisting with the investigations.<\/p>\n There are few precedents for ICE to cut off its enforcement division agencywide from using vehicle stops to make apprehensions.<\/p>\n\n
Killings in Vehicle Stops<\/h2>\n