President Donald Trump reversed a short-lived restriction on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicle stops Wednesday, directing immigration officers to resume using what he called one of the agency’s most effective enforcement tools.
Initial Stop Order
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, the reversal came one day after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered ICE officers to halt most vehicle stops nationwide following two fatal shootings during immigration operations in less than one week.
DHS imposed the temporary restriction Tuesday after the deadly encounters in Houston, Texas, and Biddeford, Maine. Neither man killed was the target agents had initially set out to arrest, though federal officials allege both weaponized their vehicles against authorities.
Another deadly encounter unfolded in Florida on Tuesday morning. Authorities say a 28-year-old Mexican national ran from immigration agents at a gas station near St. Augustine and crossed a busy road when he was struck and killed by a semi.
Later Tuesday, DHS ordered ICE officers to suspend most vehicle stops while carrying out operations across the country. A memo obtained by Fox News and sent to ICE field office directors declared, “effective immediately, all Enforcement and Removal Operations-initiated enforcement vehicle stops are suspended until further notice.”
The memo allowed an exception when officers were executing a criminal warrant against a target inside a vehicle, but ICE personnel were instructed to work with a partner agency to initiate the stop.
Trump’s Reversal
Less than 24 hours after DHS imposed the pause, President Trump abruptly overruled the department early Wednesday. He made the directive in a Truth Social post.
“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. The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job,” he wrote, in part.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who took over the job promising to get ICE out of the headlines after the fatal shootings of anti-ICE protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti in January fueled weeks of protests and clashes, backed the president’s reversal.
“Our number one goal is to keep our officers safe and get criminals off our streets. Illegal aliens will be arrested and deported wherever they are,” he wrote on X.
Practical Realities
AM Update spoke with Former Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf about the rapid policy reversal:
“I think you can do both. I think you can look at the training, you can look at the procedures, you can do a variety of things while those vehicle stops continue as well. So, you know, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He explained how ICE typically carries out a vehicle stop and why agents often prefer them to arrests at homes or workplaces:
“It’s almost always targeted. So, you know, a group of ICE agents and officers will likely surveil an individual, whether they’re at their house, their employment, whatever it might be, and then they’ll watch him or her, the target, get in a vehicle, get to a… place where there’s not a lot of people around and then they’ll make… the targeted vehicle stop in that case. And they do that because… they should have a lot of information because they can start running license plates, they can see who the car is registered to, and then determine whether or not the person driving it is the registered vehicle owner, and see who else is in the car. And so it becomes a lot safer to do it that way versus going into a house, knocking on a door, not really who knowing who’s in that house or if there are weapons in that house.”
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