Federal immigration officers are being pulled back from one of their signature enforcement tools. Multiple law-enforcement sources told CBS News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly instructed agents this week to stop initiating most vehicle stops across the country. CNN confirmed the same shift through an independent source, calling it a major reversal in recent tactics. The change follows the deaths of two men killed by agents during traffic stops within the same nine-day stretch — one in Houston, the other in a small coastal city in Maine.
Who the Pause Covers, and Who It Doesn't
The new guidance applies only to Enforcement and Removal Operations, ICE's civil-arrest and deportation wing, and not to Homeland Security Investigations, the branch that handles criminal casework, according to CBS News. Officers can still join stops led by outside agencies pursuing people wanted on judicial warrants, and the freeze is expected to lift once ERO staff complete new training on approaching vehicles safely. Traffic stops have become central to how ICE operates day to day — rather than showing up at someone's door or job site, agents increasingly wait until a target is in a car, a tactic CNN's coverage of the policy shift describes as one the agency has leaned on heavily this year. Neither man who died in the incidents that triggered the pause was actually the person agents had set out to arrest that day.
The Houston Shooting That Started the Clock
The first death came July 7, when officers in unmarked vehicles pulled over a work van in Houston's East End. Behind the wheel was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican-born homebuilder who had lived in the U.S. for more than three decades. His family says he was nearing the end of a long effort to obtain legal status when he was killed. U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia later told reporters that acting ICE Director David Venturella confirmed to her that Salgado Araujo "was not a target" of that morning's operation, according to PBS NewsHour. ICE's account holds that Salgado Araujo drove into an officer's vehicle and ignored commands before an agent fired in self-defense. None of the agents on scene wore a body camera, and the only footage to surface publicly has come from nearby shops and homes rather than from law enforcement itself.
Three other men were riding with Salgado Araujo, including his brother; all were taken into immigration custody. Two of the three later described the encounter to Garcia's office, telling her that agents approached with weapons already raised and gave no warning before firing, according to KHOU. An attorney for the men says their account flatly contradicts ICE's version of what happened.
The Harris County District Attorney's office, led by Sean Teare, has opened its own homicide investigation, though Teare says federal authorities have been slow to hand over evidence and that any charging decision — including a possible future grand jury presentation — is likely months or even years away. Separately, the FBI is examining whether Salgado Araujo assaulted a federal officer, while the DHS Office of Inspector General reviews the shooting itself, according to Houston Public Media.
A Second Death, Six Days Later, in Maine
On July 13, agents watching a Biddeford, Maine home tied to someone with a standing deportation order opened fire on a car leaving the property, killing the driver: 26-year-old Colombian national Joan Sebastian Guerrero. The Department of Homeland Security says Guerrero drove toward an officer while trying to flee and that the agent fired out of concern for public safety — an account Maine's attorney general is still examining. DHS's story shifted within hours: Sen. Angus King said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin first told him Guerrero had been the actual target of that day's warrant, then walked that back and confirmed he was not, according to the Press Herald.
Guerrero's immigration status is itself now disputed. ICE's statement described him as living in the country illegally under a final removal order, while two advocacy groups — the Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine — say he had been legally authorized to work and held a Social Security number, a claim neither DHS nor ICE has directly reconciled with its own account.
King has pushed for an investigation that isn't run solely by federal agencies, saying the government currently lacks credibility on the matter. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, said she called Mullin the night before the vehicle-stop pause became public to press him to halt non-emergency stops. At a vigil for Guerrero, Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau delivered a pointed message to Washington: "We will not change for Donald Trump or anyone else," according to the Portland Press Herald. Rep. Jared Golden noted that Congress approved funding for ICE body cameras months earlier, yet the agents involved in Monday's shooting still didn't have them.
Part of a Wider Pattern
The two killings arrive amid a string of similar close calls. On July 1 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, surveillance video captured an ICE officer breaking a car window and firing as the driver sped off. That driver, identified by ICE as Clemente Lara-Hernandez, was not known to have been struck and remains at large, according to local coverage of the incident. Further back, in January, two people were killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis: Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen shot while sitting in her car during a protest, and Alex Pretti, a nurse shot after he intervened when agents shoved another bystander to the ground.
A review of data from The Trace, reported by KHOU, found that immigration agents had already opened fire in ten separate incidents in 2026 before the Houston shooting — enough to eclipse last year's count of 15 shootings, four of them fatal, if the pace holds.
A federal judge overseeing a separate dispute about aggressive Border Patrol tactics in Illinois summed up the stakes last fall. "Cameras are your friends," U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told a Border Patrol commander, arguing that footage would resolve exactly this kind of dispute over whether officers actually faced a threat, according to CNN.
What Happens Next
ICE has not formally acknowledged the new policy. A spokesperson told CNN only that the agency continually reviews its own procedures to protect officers and the public, declining to discuss tactics further. DHS has pointed to two government shutdowns earlier this year as the reason body cameras still haven't reached many field offices, even after Congress approved $20 million for the program in April, according to CNN's reporting. Lawmakers from both parties have criticized how slowly that rollout has gone, though the record doesn't support the idea that this is a straightforward partisan blame game — the complaints so far center on DHS's pace, not an accusation of deliberate obstruction.
With the FBI, DHS's inspector general, Maine's attorney general, and Harris County prosecutors all now working separate pieces of the record — and Teare warning that his side of the investigation alone could stretch on for months — how long ICE keeps vehicle stops paused, and what the promised retraining actually changes in the field, remains unresolved.
