US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been told to halt most vehicle stops nationwide immediately, following a pair of fatal shootings in Texas and Maine involving ICE agents.
The suspension will apply to most circumstances except cases involving serious criminal targets, according to US media reports citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
It marks a significant tactical shift for the agency, which has faced criticism in the past year over allegations of excessive use of force and scrutiny over deaths that have occurred during its operations.
White House border tsar Tom Homan says the move is not a policy change, but “a temporary pause” and that deportations will continue.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declined to comment, telling the BBC: “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.”
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Homan, who is an adviser to Trump, said that agents already have extensive vehicle-stop training.
He said officers have only a few moments to react during stops and “every arrest is different”.
The pause, he added, would be brief and would allow leadership to conduct a short-term review.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told the BBC News Channel on Tuesday that he is fearful more incidents like this will happen due to what he called “quotas” at ICE for deportations and arrests.
Durbin, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which oversees federal policing as well as immigration and criminal justice reform, said people at ICE “are not following the basic rules and principles when it comes to good policing”.
“Saying that they’re just going to adjust things is not enough,” the senator insisted. “This is creating a wave of terror and fear in our country. It is interfering with the lives of people who just want to be good citizens and good people.”
In the recent incident, an ICE agent fatally shot a 26-year-old Colombian national during an immigration enforcement operation in Maine.
DHS said the officer, “fearing for public safety”, opened fire on the man when he attempted to flee the scene of the operation and after agents tried to stop his vehicle.
The department did not specify the threat he posed.
The shooting took place in Biddeford, Maine, about 24 km (15 miles) south of Portland.
Immigration advocates have said the man was authorised to work in the US and had a social security number.
He has not yet been officially named, but local lawmakers and neighbours identified him as Joan Sebastian Guerrero.
Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine, two migrant advocacy groups, issued a joint statement calling his death “devastating, enraging, and unacceptable”.
In a separate incident early on Tuesday, a person fleeing from federal immigration agents in St. Augustine, Florida, was struck and killed by a tractor trailer, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
Less than a week earlier, another man – a Mexican national who had been living in the US for decades – was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Houston, Texas.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was stopped at 07:00 local time (12:00 GMT) while driving to work and was killed shortly afterwards.
DHS said last Thursday the stop was initiated because they saw “a white van with an individual who resembled the target” of an operation. They have said the officer shot in self-defence and that Araujo was not the man ICE was looking for.
Passengers in the van and the victim’s family have disputed the department’s account and the agency’s legal watchdog has opened an investigation into the fatal shooting.
Both shootings in Maine and Texas have sparked protests.
They come after demonstrations took place across the country earlier this year following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Both US citizens, they were protesting when they were fatally shot in confrontations with ICE agents in January.
In March, US President Donald Trump replaced Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary with Markwayne Mullin, a senator from Oklahoma. Former border patrol chief Gregory Bovino was replaced soon afterwards.
Trump launched a campaign of deportations shortly after his return to the White House.
At least seven people have been killed in immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, according to Reuters.
Kwasi Asiedu, Nardine Saad and Sareen Habeshian contributed to this report.
