Washington DC - President Donald Trump's White House recently confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon resume performing traffic stops despite the fatal shooting of two immigrants.
During a briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared that "vehicle stops are continuing" now that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has provided "verbal guidance" for all field offices.
"The president and the Secretary of Homeland Security are on the same page that vehicle stops are a necessary tool that ICE agents need in order to continue their deportation campaign of the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals from our country," Leavitt added.
The news comes after DHS instructed ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division to cease stops nationwide, except in cases involving serious criminal targets.
The pause came after agents in Texas fatally shot Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on June 7, and agents in Maine fatally shot a Colombian man named Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford on June 13.
Trump complained about the policy change in a Truth Social post, arguing, "We CANNOT give up" ICE's "most important and effective Crime Fighting tools."
In her remarks, Leavitt said the administration's commitment to providing body cameras for ICE agents has been "a slower rollout than we hoped," blaming Democrats for "their decision to shut down DHS."