LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency says it's pausing most vehicle stops in its enforcement operations.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Those are the kind of stops that led to two killings in a week. Fathers in Texas and Maine were killed after ICE officers fired into their vehicles. ICE suspended the stops earlier this week, according to Maine Senator Angus King. This morning, President Trump seemed to contradict the new policy in a post on Truth Social, calling the stops, quote, "one of ICE's most important and effective crime-fighting tools." It's not clear yet if or how that could affect policy going forward.
FADEL: NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán joins us to talk about all this. Hi, Sergio.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: So tell us more about what this policy shift means.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Yeah. I mean, this could mark a significant change. The last two deaths stemmed from traffic stops. That includes the fatal shootings of Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine this week and that of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas last week. The Department of Homeland Security accused Duran Guerrero of being a public safety threat and Salgado Araujo of weaponizing his car to run over an ICE officer. Neither of them was the intended immigration enforcement target and no video evidence has been presented to back up DHS' claims.
Yesterday, NPR confirmed that the agency will pause - at least for now - conducting traffic stops. DHS told NPR it will not discuss enforcement tactics, so we don't yet know all the details of this change, but the office of U.S. Senator Angus King tell us this is happening.
FADEL: Now, there have been a lot of big questions, as you kind of mentioned here, about whether deadly force should have been used in these cases and whether these men posed any danger. What's DHS' policy on the use of deadly force?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: So DHS has accused Duran Guerrero in Maine of attempting to flee the scene. The agency's policy says deadly force cannot be used solely to prevent someone from fleeing unless the person poses a significant threat. Paul Hunker is a former chief counsel for ICE in Dallas.
PAUL HUNKER: The standards and principle are clear - you know, a person has to pose an imminent threat of harm to use deadly force.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Hunker says whether that person poses an imminent threat is always from the perspective of the officer.
FADEL: Why were the agents in both Texas and Maine not wearing body cameras? I mean, that was the expectation after other killings.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: That was. As you might remember, after the deadly shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, DHS said it was going to quickly deploy body cameras to agents across the country. Well, that hasn't happened. Only about half of the field officers have body cameras, according to DHS. The agency is blaming Democrats in Congress and the partial government shutdowns for this. But the agency is once again vowing to deploy body cameras for all agents in the next 60 days. Still, Leila, advocates, politicians and community members are calling for independent investigations into these shootings.
FADEL: Sergio, the interesting thing that you mentioned is that the victims in Texas and Maine were not the intended targets of ICE when the officers attempted to pull them over. Is that a coincidence?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Not really. This is a result of a shift in approach by the Trump administration. Under previous presidents, collateral arrests were not happening as much - that is, the arrest of people who were not the intended targets of the federal immigration agents. So for example, agents would go to a home to arrest a specific person. If others around them were undocumented but not criminals, ICE officers typically ignored them. But because President Trump has an ambitious goal of arresting millions of immigrants, ICE agents have been feeling the pressure of arresting anyone who is undocumented and of pulling over anyone who might be suspected of being in the country illegally. And that could lead to killings like this.
FADEL: That's NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán. Thank you, Sergio.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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