US president backs tactic despite agency announcing temporary pause after fatal shootings in Texas and Maine.

Just a day after his administration announced it was temporarily pausing most ICE traffic stops following two fatal shootings, President Donald Trump is urging United States immigration agents to keep using the tactic.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers for doing a “GREAT job” and argued that traffic stops remain one of the agency’s most effective tools as it carries out his mass deportation campaign.

“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!” Trump wrote. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

He also urged officers to be “judicious, fair and smart” as they “go back and do your very important job”.

The comments came a day after Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said ICE was temporarily suspending most traffic stops while it reviewed the practice after two deadly shootings within a week.

“It’s not a policy change. It’s a temporary pause,” Homan told Fox News on Tuesday. “This is going to be a short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.”

Homan said officers would continue making arrests using other tactics while the review was under way.

The review was prompted by the fatal shooting on Monday of 25-year-old Colombian national Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero during an ICE operation in Biddeford, Maine.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, initially told Maine Senator Angus King an officer fired after Duran Guerrero tried to use his vehicle as a weapon. Later, the department publicly said only that Duran Guerrero had tried to flee and an officer, “fearing for public safety”, opened fire.

The officers involved were not wearing body cameras, and the FBI and Maine authorities are investigating the shooting.

Six days earlier, an ICE agent in Houston, Texas, fatally shot 52-year-old Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during another vehicle stop. DHS said the officer fired after Salgado Araujo “weaponised” his vehicle, but witnesses and family members have disputed that account.

The Department of Homeland Security has described both men as being in the US without documentation but has acknowledged neither was the intended target of the deportation operations that ended in their deaths.

Federal authorities have not publicly released evidence to support claims that either man posed a threat warranting the use of deadly force. Advocates have charged that Trump administration officials’ initial characterisations of similar incidents, including the killing of two US citizens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January, have previously proven misleading.

The back-to-back shootings have fuelled protests in Maine, Houston and Boston, Massachusetts, while raising renewed questions about ICE’s use of force and the agency’s reliance on traffic stops. It has also raised questions over training as the agency has sought to swiftly expand its ranks under Trump.

According to a tally by The Associated Press news agency, at least 10 people have been killed during federal immigration enforcement operations since Trump launched his deportation campaign after returning to office in January 2025. At least four of those deaths involved vehicles.

John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under former President Barack Obama, told AP there have been roughly 18 traffic-stop shootings during Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The trend has prompted Maine Senator Susan Collins to urge Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to suspend “all nonurgent vehicle stops”, she said on Tuesday.

ICE said it has increasingly relied on vehicle stops as more immigrants avoid arrest by refusing to leave their homes.

The agency has blamed immigration advocates, pointing to advice to immigrants not to open their doors unless officers produce a warrant signed by a judge rather than the administrative warrants ICE typically uses.