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Less than a full day after several news outlets reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would temporarily suspend agents from conducting traffic stops across the country, President Donald Trump demanded that the agency continue engaging in the practice.
ICE agents have shot and killed two people while conducting traffic stops during this month alone.
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday morning, Trump said the suspension of ICE traffic stops “won’t happen on my watch.”
“The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” Trump wrote, disregarding the two men killed at the hands of ICE agents over the past two weeks.
“We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP,” the president added.
He then advised the agency to be “judicious, fair and smart,” and concluded by telling ICE agents “you are loved and respected in America.”
That statement is inconsistent with recent polling data.
According to a YouGov survey published in late June, only 32 percent of Americans view ICE as a trustworthy agency. Meanwhile, 44 percent say ICE is untrustworthy, while 17 percent say ICE is neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy. Combining the two latter measures, the survey suggests that 6 in 10 Americans would not describe the agency as trustworthy.
A PRRI survey in March also demonstrated that most Americans do not have a positive view of ICE, with only 33 percent of respondents in that poll stating that they have a favorable view of the agency.
Several news organizations reported on Tuesday that ICE, at the direction of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin, would temporarily suspend the practice of traffic stops and that ICE agents will receive additional training on when and how to conduct such stops.
The move came after ICE agents shot and killed two people during traffic stops in July — Maine resident Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero, who was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a valid Social Security number, and Texas resident Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who has resided in the Houston area for over three decades. In both cases, ICE alleged that agents acted out of fear for public safety or because agents’ safety was threatened — claims that were repeatedly disputed by witnesses to the killings.
On the same day that it was reported that ICE would suspend traffic stops, an ICE vehicle pursuit in Florida resulted in yet another death when a man was accidentally struck and killed by a tractor trailer while attempting to flee from agents.
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