ICE halts most traffic-stop arrests in wake of fatal shootings

WASHINGTON - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has temporarily instructed officers to refrain from making traffic-stop arrests in most cases, according to several people with knowledge of the directive, a policy shift spurred by a pair of fatal shootings over the past week.

The pause comes as the Trump administration scrambles to respond to the incidents in Houston last week and in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday, in which officers fired into vehicles and killed immigrants from Mexico and Colombia, respectively. Three former federal immigration officials said they were informed by current Department of Homeland Security officials of the pause — which one person said covers vehicle stops and pertains to officers within ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division.

“Guidance was sent nationwide from ICE HQ — no vehicle interactions whatsoever,” said one former official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications.

Specifics of the pause were not immediately available.

“We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets,” an ICE spokesperson said. “We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”

DHS has said the officers in both Houston and Biddeford fired defensively after the drivers allegedly resisted arrest and endangered the officers and the public as they attempted to drive away. But local officials and immigrant rights groups in both cities have questioned the government’s narrative and called for independent investigations of the shootings.

The mounting questions surrounding those incidents have renewed public scrutiny of ICE’s aggressive tactics as the Trump administration has ramped up monthly immigration arrests and fatalities mount.

In another deadly incident Tuesday, a person was struck by a commercial truck in St. Augustine, Florida, while fleeing federal immigration agents, according to state officials. Shortly before 7 a.m., Homeland Security and ICE agents stopped a vehicle in the parking lot of a gas station. Four occupants fled on foot, and one ran into the path of a tractor trailer, authorities said.

Amid the lethal encounters, lawmakers, policing experts and former federal immigration officials have called on the agency to review its training methods and use-of-force policies.

Shooting into a moving vehicle breaks with broadly accepted best practices for law enforcement.

Law enforcement officials in many districts have imposed restrictions on when officers can fire at a vehicle. Chicago police, for instance, prohibit officers from firing at or into a moving car “when the vehicle is the only force used.” Los Angeles police are also barred from shooting at moving vehicles unless someone inside poses an immediate threat to the officer or another person “with deadly force by means other than the vehicle.”

Thaddeus Johnson, a senior research fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, said that the Biddeford shooting demonstrates the risk of such scenarios. Surveillance camera footage shows the car of the man who was shot slowly circling the road after the gunfire, with officers trying to halt its progress.

If an elderly person or a child had been in the vicinity, they could have been injured by the car’s progress, Johnson said, even if the car was advancing slowly. Other ICE-involved shootings have led to higher-speed crashes. In Minneapolis, Renée Good, after she was shot, accelerated down the road, ultimately crashing into a parked car.

Daniel Altman, the former director of internal affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. also criticized DHS for failing to ensure that officers were wearing body cameras during the Biddeford shooting. He said the cameras give a window, albeit an imperfect one, into an officer’s experience during a shooting, adding that it is difficult to draw any conclusion about use of force from surveillance videos such as those from Biddeford. (Source: The Washington Post)