ICE Orders Agents to Halt Car Stops After Request From Susan Collins

Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday ordered its agents to temporarily halt most car stops following two fatal shootings in Houston and Maine, according to multiple reports.

The decision comes one day after an ICE agent fatally shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian national, in Biddeford, Maine. It was the second fatal shooting involving an ICE agent in less than a week.

Agents will continue such stops when trying to serve criminal warrants on a person inside a vehicle, CNN reported.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who oversees ICE, for the change following Monday morning’s shooting.

“While the investigation of the Biddeford shooting is not yet complete, it raises sufficient critical questions that I spoke with DHS Secretary Mullin last night and urged him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops,” Collins said in a statement Tuesday.

Collins’ call came just hours after protesters swarmed her district office in Maine in response to the shooting, chanting “Vote her out!” and “ICE out now!” while banging on the building’s doors.

She has also pushed for an expedited investigation into the shooting, and an accounting of “the extent to which [DHS] will collaborate with state and local agencies” on the probe.

“Timely and factual answers will be critical to providing closure for the grieving community,” Collins wrote alongside the rest of the Maine congressional delegation in a letter to top DHS officials Tuesday.

“It’s not a policy change — it’s a temporary pause,” border czar Tom Homan said during a Fox News interview Tuesday. “I think it’s going to be a short pause and I’m confident that ICE is well-trained in vehicle stops.”

He added that the pause will not affect ICE arrest efforts.

In an emailed statement earlier Tuesday, an ICE spokesperson wrote, “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”

DHS publicly acknowledged the fatal shooting in Maine nearly 12 hours after it happened, stating that ICE agents were conducting a targeted surveillance operation on the last known address of an immigrant “with a final order of removal” and had tried to stop a driver leaving the home.

“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the department wrote in a statement on X.

Neither Guerrero nor Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the man fatally shot in Houston last week, was a direct target of ICE operations.

Collins told reporters on Tuesday the ICE agents involved in the Maine shooting didn’t wear body cameras because the agency had been delayed in getting them after the government shutdowns, the latest of which ended in April.

“I am also very eager to get the body-worn cameras out to all ICE officials,” she said. “It should be mandatory, and that is $20 million that I negotiated back in January that became law in April.”

Democrats vying to replace Graham Platner as their party’s nominee for Senate in Maine have criticized Collins’ funding of the agency.

“This rogue agency must be abolished,” said Troy Jackson, one of the Democrats seeking the nomination, in an X post on Tuesday. “Susan Collins must be held accountable for funding this terror.”

Nirav Shah, another candidate who along with Jackson spoke at an “emergency community rally” hours after the shooting, also bashed Collins.

“Susan Collins voted for zero rules, zero safeguards, and zero transparency,” Shah wrote Tuesday on X.

In response, Collins told reporters she’s the one who has argued for safeguards.

“It’s disappointing to see potential candidates use a tragedy to try to advance a political agenda,” she said.