U.S. News

ICE Suspended Vehicle Stops Nationwide After Three Deaths in One Week

By Mike Harper · July 15, 2026

In seven days, three people died during encounters with federal immigration agents. On Tuesday, the agency blinked.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement suspended most vehicle stops related to immigration enforcement, a significant tactical retreat that came after a week that exposed serious questions about how the agency’s operations are being carried out — and who is getting caught in them.

The week began July 7 in Houston, where ICE agents in unmarked vehicles followed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 53, a Colombian business owner, after he picked up workers for a construction job. Security camera footage obtained by local CBS affiliate KHOU showed an agent firing through the passenger window of his van. DHS initially said the man resembled someone agents were looking for. He was not.

On Monday, a second man died in Biddeford, Maine. Johan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, a Colombian national authorized to work in the United States, was shot by a DEA agent assigned to an immigration task force. Sen. Angus King of Maine said he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who initially told him the victim was the intended target. Hours later, Mullin called back and corrected himself. Guerrero was not the person agents were seeking.

Then on Tuesday morning in St. Augustine, Florida, a 28-year-old man was among four people whose car was stopped in a gas station parking lot by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents. All four fled on foot. One ran across State Road 16 into the path of a tractor-trailer. The truck driver stopped and tried to help. The man died at the scene.

Three deaths in eight days. None of the three was definitively confirmed as the intended target of the operations that preceded their deaths.

By Tuesday afternoon, ICE had issued a nationwide order suspending most vehicle stops for immigration enforcement. Border Czar Tom Homan said the pause would remain in effect until ICE could review its vehicle stop policies and retrain agents. The suspension does not cover all enforcement operations — agents can still conduct arrests at locations and make targeted stops in some circumstances — but it represents a direct operational response to the pattern of deaths.

The political fallout is accelerating. More than a dozen members of Congress have called for investigations. Mexico’s government said it would file formal legal complaints over seventeen deaths involving ICE agents since the start of Trump’s second term. The Justice Department separately began turning over evidence to Minnesota authorities investigating earlier ICE-involved shootings.

What remains unanswered is the question that has hung over all three deaths this week: what review process exists before an operation is authorized, and what accountability follows when it goes wrong. ICE has not publicly identified the agents involved in either the Houston or Maine shootings. No charges have been filed. No video from the Maine or Florida incidents has been released.

The tractor-trailer driver in St. Augustine was not charged.