President Donald Trump praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a Wednesday social media post and contradicted his own administration by calling for the agency’s traffic stops to continue, despite its agents being involved in recent slayings in Houston and Maine.
“The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president’s rhetoric contradicts guidance his own administration handed down Tuesday. The White House advised ICE to suspend most traffic stops in the wake of fatal shootings within one week at the hands of its agents. Both occurred after agents stopped the individuals in their vehicles, according to the New York Times.
In the Wednesday post, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for allowing “25,000,000 people to pour into our Country,” adding that “many were Criminals, and we have to get them out.”
He added: “In order to do this, 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.”
Following Monday’s shooting in Maine, Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who’s running for reelection, said in a statement that she urged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
“It’s a short pause just to make sure we’re doing the right thing,” Homan said in an interview on the Will Cain Show. “Operations continue. Arrests are at record numbers. Deportations are at record numbers.”
ICE agents shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant, in Biddeford, Maine on Monday. Guerrero, who was the father of a 3-year-old girl, was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number, CNN reports.
This was just a few days after the July 7 shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Houston business owner and father of three U.S. citizens. Salgado Araujo was a Mexican citizen who had resided in the States for 35 years and was working with an immigration attorney to obtain legal authorization to work here.
Both men were heading to work when they were pulled over by ICE vehicles. In both shootings, the agents involved weren’t wearing body cameras. In both fatal encounters, agency officials claimed the men attempted to flee, prompting agents to fire in self-defense.
Though the agency referred to both incidents as occurring as a result of “targeted operations,” neither Guerrero nor Araujo were the intended target of the ICE operations that led to their deaths.
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