Trump says ICE should continue traffic stops after two men killed

Demonstrators hold signs during a protest against the ICE for the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, in Houston, Texas, on 14 July. Photograph: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Demonstrators hold signs during a protest against the ICE for the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, in Houston, Texas, on 14 July. Photograph: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images Trump says ICE should continue traffic stops after two men killed Comment comes after homeland security sources say federal officers told to temporarily stop pulling drivers over Donald Trump said on Wednesday morning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should continue making traffic stops, just one day after the homeland security department (DHS) said they’d be halting them in the wake of recent stops that left two men killed in the space of a week. Federal officers across the US had been told to temporarily stop pulling drivers over on Tuesday, homeland security sources told the Guardian. That directive came after ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on 7 July and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. Both men were unarmed, neither was the intended target of the operation that killed him, and in both cases the agents involved wore no body camera to record what happened. The president’s Wednesday declaration made no mention of either killing when he countermanded the order. In a Truth Social post, he insisted that “we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.” He added that the partial rein in “won’t happen on my watch”. The whiplash from the post rebukes his own homeland security department, which had just spent a day trying to contain the fallout from back-to-back killings. Trump used the moment to credit ICE with falling crime rates, repeated his inflated claim that “25,000,000 people” crossed the border unchecked under Joe Biden, and instructed agents to “keep those Crime Stat Records coming”. He concluded by telling officers they are “loved and respected in America” though no reassurance was offered to the families of the men they killed. DHS itself has struggled to settle on an explanation for its own order. Border czar Tom Homan described the pause as temporary, pending a review and possible retraining of agents, while a department spokesperson would say only that officials are “always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets” and would not discuss tactics. Fox News reported the halt carved out an exception for “the most egregious criminal aliens”, meaning it was never the blanket ban Trump’s post implies he is fighting to prevent. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on whether the car stops would continue again, though in a past statement said “we will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics”. Five