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.

ICE refused to confirm the change in policy.

“We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. “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.”