US President Donald Trump has lashed out at a decision by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to suspend the use of traffic stops after two fatal shootings in less than a week.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) halted the practice after a Colombian man was shot dead in Maine on Monday and a Mexican man was killed in an operation in Texas last week.
“We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump said in an early morning post on his Truth Social network.
“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.”
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that there was a “pause” in traffic stops, but insisted the practice was effective and would return.
Tasked with enforcing Trump’s immigration crackdown, ICE’s heavily armed agents have faced nationwide backlash for aggressive tactics and for the shooting deaths of two US citizens earlier this year in Minneapolis.
Rights groups identified the victim in Monday’s shooting in Biddeford, Maine as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, a delivery driver authorised to work in the United States, who lived with his wife and 3-year-old daughter.
Colombian leader Gustavo Petro, a harsh critic of Trump’s immigration crackdown, called the killing a “murder of a Latin American Colombian at the hands of the US government”.
In last week’s shooting in Texas, immigration authorities claimed Lorenzo Salgado, 52, had tried to run over an ICE agent but witnesses have disputed that account.
No Kings, a coalition of groups protesting Trump’s presidency, said in a statement Wednesday that the killings are a “horrific hallmark of continued authoritarian overreach by the Trump administration.”
“We stand in unwavering solidarity with them and will continue fighting for a country where no one is subjected to violence by an unaccountable administration or a president who acts like a king. No Kings. ICE Out.”
- AFP