By Aleksandra Michalska and Kristina Cooke
BIDDEFORD, Maine, July 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told officers on Tuesday to suspend most vehicle stops around the country, two sources briefed on the matter said, after agents fatally shot two men six days apart during stops in Texas and Maine.
The policy shift came one day after an ICE officer killed a driver in the coastal Maine town of Biddeford, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Portland.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a statement nearly 12 hours after the shooting asserting that the officer, “fearing for public safety,” opened fire when the driver attempted to flee.
Officials have not explained how the driver might have posed a threat to the public or whether that would justify the shooting. According to ICE policy, officers may use deadly force only when there is “imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death to the officer or to another person” and is not authorized “solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.”
While some video footage of the incident’s aftermath has emerged, there is not yet any public video showing the moment of the shooting itself. U.S. Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, told reporters that the agents were not wearing body cameras.
DHS said the agents were surveilling the last known address of someone with a final order of removal from the country. When someone departed the residence, the officers followed the car, the agency said.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told King that the man killed was not the target of the operation, according to a spokesperson for the senator.
Immigration advocates said the person shot was a 26-year-old man from Colombia who was authorized to work in the U.S. The shooting sparked immediate protests on Monday, and further demonstrations were taking place on Tuesday.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro in a post on X blamed the U.S. government for killing the man, whom he identified as Johan Sebastian Duran.
“He was killed because he was believed to be an inferior being with no rights,” Petro wrote, adding that he expected Colombia’s foreign service in the U.S. to take the “swiftest possible” legal and humanitarian action to hold those responsible for Duran’s death accountable.
Duran, who grew up in Bucaramanga, Colombia, had a partner and a young daughter and worked two jobs, including as a food delivery driver, the Portland Press Herald reported. Nearby residents told the newspaper that his partner and daughter witnessed the aftermath of the shooting and could be heard crying in the street.
Since the beginning of June, ICE arrests in Maine have more than quadrupled to around 70 per day in early July, according to internal ICE data shared with Reuters by a source.
Monday’s killing, along with another last week in Houston, brought to at least seven the number of people shot dead during immigration enforcement operations since January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a campaign of mass deportations.
Asked about the suspension of traffic stops, an ICE spokesperson said, “We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics.”
‘I TRIED TO STOP’
One witness, Daniel Boucher, 71, a caregiver and part-time draftsman who lives in downtown Biddeford, told Reuters he heard what sounded like firecrackers on Monday morning, rushed to the window and saw a white SUV ram a smaller white car.
Boucher said he then saw an ICE officer emerge from the SUV and pull out the car’s driver, who had blood on his face and head.
“I remember hearing the victim say, ‘But I tried to stop,'” Boucher said, before the man appeared to stop breathing.
In a video clip verified by Reuters, the white car appears to meander directionless as two men wearing vests on foot try to stop it, but it was unclear from the video when the shooting may have occurred.
The Maine attorney general’s office said it was investigating the shooting alongside local, state and federal authorities.
HOUSTON SHOOTING
The shooting came six days after an ICE agent in Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End fatally shot a 52-year-old man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, after a traffic stop during an immigration enforcement operation. Salgado was not the target of the operation, a DHS official has said.
ICE said in a statement that Salgado, a Mexican national living in the U.S. illegally for over three decades, rammed a law enforcement vehicle with his van and attempted to run down an officer who fired in self-defense.
The agency offered no evidence to support its account. In similar instances over the past year, initial ICE and DHS statements about the use of force have been contradicted by video footage or other evidence, sometimes in court.
Three men who were riding in Salgado’s van have disputed ICE’s narrative, according to a lawyer for two of the men.
Arrests of immigrants have surged in recent weeks, even as the Trump administration has moved away from broad sweeps in Democratic-led cities. Those operations were widely criticized as violent and heavy-handed after two U.S. citizens were killed in January by federal agents in Minnesota.
(Reporting by Aleksandra Michalska in Biddeford, Maine, and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Helen Coster; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Alistair Bell and Mark Porter)
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