WASHINGTON, United States, July 15, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - US President Donald 
Trump lashed out Wednesday 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 authorized to work in the 
United States, who lived with his wife and three-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.