On July 14, 2026, the Trump administration ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to suspend most traffic stops during immigration operations, following two deadly shootings of drivers of Latin American origin in Texas and Maine within the same week.

On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national who had lived in the United States for more than three decades, was shot and killed by ICE agents in Houston while driving to his job at a construction site. On July 13, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian, was shot in Biddeford, Maine, during a traffic stop. In both cases, the victims were not the target of the operations.

According to Associated Press, the suspension is temporary and will remain in place while agents receive additional training. The order, also reported by PBS News, allows exceptions when agents are executing a judicial arrest warrant or operating alongside other agencies.

Maine Senators Angus King and Susan Collins asked Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin to halt non-urgent stops. The DHS Office of the Inspector General and the FBI are investigating both shootings. In the Maine case, agents were not wearing body cameras, according to PBS News.

President Trump declared on July 14 that ICE should continue traffic stops, directly contradicting the temporary suspension announced by his own administration. The pause comes as immigration operations are intensifying: in the last five days of June, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people nationwide, according to PBS News. The Houston shooting marked at least the ninth use-of-lethal-force incident by ICE agents since the start of the Trump administration's immigration offensive.

The temporary suspension modifies, for now, the conditions under which families of mixed immigration status travel daily along U.S. roads and through U.S. cities. How long the measure lasts depends on the completion of the additional training ordered by the agency itself.

This article was produced with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.