Trump reverses ICE vehicle-stop pause after backlash from MAGA allies

Donald Trump reversed ICE’s pause on vehicle stops after a brief internal order had told agents to stop making them “immediately” and focus on other enforcement methods. The walk-back came after criticism from prominent MAGA voices and ended a stopgap that had been put in place after fatal shootings during immigration enforcement operations in Maine and Texas.

Inside the Department of Homeland Security, the shift moved fast. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had ordered the pause, and ICE officers were told to rely on other tactics while the agency reassessed vehicle-based enforcement. Trump’s reversal restored a tactic that reaches drivers and passengers on roads and in neighborhoods, the kind of street-level policing that can widen the scope of immigration enforcement far beyond planned arrests.

The controversy sharpened after the killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13, 2026. Durán Guerrero, identified in different accounts as a 25-year-old or 26-year-old father from Colombia, had been working to give his daughter a stable life, and advocates said he was authorized to work in the United States. Daniel Boucher has been recounting the aftermath and Durán Guerrero’s final words as the shooting has become a flashpoint in the broader fight over ICE tactics.

The policy shift landed against a much larger enforcement push. The administration’s new immigration arrest target is at least 2,000 arrests a day, and federal officials had previously discussed a goal of 3,000. ICE arrested 10,000 people in five days at the end of June, underscoring the scale of the operations that vehicle stops can help support. With the pause lifted, the agency signaled that traffic stops remain part of that machinery, not a tactic to be suspended after backlash.

In Chicago’s Little Village, residents and activists held a candlelight vigil in response to the killings and the reversal. Some described the original pause as only a “baby step,” a sign that the fight is not just over one shooting or one memo, but over how far federal officers can go on neighborhood streets before the legal guardrails and public trust begin to fray.