U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has suspended the use of traffic stops to arrest immigrants following two fatal shootings, according to current and former ICE officials familiar with the matter.
ICE leadership instructed officers not to stop moving vehicles to arrest or question the occupants inside, the people said. That would eliminate one of the most common tools immigration officers rely on to carry out arrests and will almost certainly put a dent in the numbers of people the administration has been taking in to meet its internal arrest quotas.
The decision came the day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot a 26-year-old man in coastal Biddeford, Maine. The Department of Homeland Security said officers were conducting an operation related to a final order of removal at a residence.
Officers tried to stop a person leaving the home in a vehicle, and an officer who was "fearing for public safety discharged his weapon," DHS said. Last week, a man was killed during an immigration-enforcement operation in Houston, federal authorities have said. DHS initially said that the man had weaponized his vehicle and that an immigration officer fired in self-defense.
Lawmakers in Maine and Texas have said neither man was the intended target of the enforcement operations.
An ICE spokesman declined to comment on the specific policy changes. "We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets," he said.
The second shooting of its kind, in the course of roughly a week, left top ICE and other administration officials deeply shaken, the current and former ICE officials said. In recent weeks, they had been ramping up arrests to meet a quota of 2,000 a day, with officers meticulously staking out the homes and workplaces of immigrants they were targeting for arrest -- and most often catching them as they left one of those locations by car.
ICE will also now avoid sending officers out to make arrests unless at least one person on the arrest team is wearing a body camera. The agency only has enough cameras to equip about half of its officers, and though it has ordered more, the specific type of body camera it uses is on back order.
Officials said, in addition to the policy change, they plan to re-evaluate training so that officers are better equipped to de-escalate situations where immigrants try to ram them with their cars, the people said. In cases where immigrants attempt to flee, officers for now have been instructed to wait and attempt another arrest at a different time.
There had been a relative lull in federal immigration activity after two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed in separate shootings in Minnesota in January. Good was also killed while behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 14, 2026 12:33 ET (16:33 GMT)
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