When ICE tactics lead to shootings

**Amina Serna** (0:04)
This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, July 16th.
I'm Amina Serna, a producer for the show, filling in for Brian today. In less than a week this month, ICE agents shot and killed two men during immigration operations, and in both cases, the man who died was not the person agents had come looking for. On July 7th, in Houston's East End, an officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Arajo, a 52-year-old from Mexico. The government says he used his van as a weapon. Passengers who were with him say that's not what happened. Then this past Monday in Bidford, Maine, an agent shot and killed Johann Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a young Colombian father who neighbors say was on his way to work.
Neither ICE agent was wearing a body camera. So much of what we know comes down to competing accounts. In Washington, the response has been whiplash. On Tuesday, the administration paused most ICE traffic stops. By Wednesday morning, President Trump had personally reversed that on his truth social account, calling the traffic stop one of ICE's most important tools.
Joining me now to sort out what we actually know and what we don't, is Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, immigration correspondent for NPR. Sergio, welcome back to WNYC.

**Sergio Martínez-Beltrán** (1:37)
Thank you so much. It's good to be with you, Amina.

**Amina Serna** (1:39)
You've been covering this story as it moves almost hour by hour. Two men killed by ICE in less than a week in Houston and in a small town in Maine.
Who were they and what do we actually know about how each of them died?

**Sergio Martínez-Beltrán** (1:54)
Yeah. Like you mentioned, there is a lot of competing narratives here. But in the case of the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo that happened in Houston, as you mentioned, and what we do know is that DHS, the Department of Homeland Security had been surveilling a home in Houston when agents saw someone who reassembled their target, and reassemble is the operating word here. Someone who reassembled the target get in the van that was being driven by Mr. Salgado Araujo.
The agents, according to the agency, decided they needed to pull the van over and the agency says that Mr. Salgado Araujo was trying to flee the scene and weaponized his car against a federal agent. I think it's important to note that DHS in the past has said that people have used their cars as a weapon against agents and then when either bystander video comes out or body cam video comes out, we can see that that was not necessarily true. In this particular case, because the agents in Houston were not wearing body cameras, it's really hard to see that angle and to be honest, I was in Houston covering this story. I know the colleagues at Houston Public Media were there too and they have been, we have been trying to figure out from business cameras or home cameras, if we can have a better understanding of what happened minutes before or seconds before the agent decided to pull out their gun, but we don't have a complete picture yet. Then in the case of Joan Duran Guerrero in Maine, it's a similar story.
The agents were trying to pull him over. What's different here, and I think it's important to note is that in this particular case in Maine, the Department of Homeland Security never accused the person Mr. Duran Guerrero of weaponizing his vehicle. This is different. In this particular case, the agency is saying that Mr. Duran Guerrero was shot after the agent feared for public safety. What does that mean? We're not completely sure.

**Amina Serna** (4:12)
As of yesterday morning, the Trump administration has essentially reversed itself twice in one day. So can you walk us through a little bit of that timeline? What did DHS decide on Tuesday and what did the president do on Wednesday?

**Sergio Martínez-Beltrán** (4:26)
Yeah, so the deaths of these two men, of Mr. Salgado Araujo in Houston and Mr. Duran Guerrero in Maine, they both stemmed from traffic stops. And so on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said that it was going to pause for now conducting traffic stops. And White House Border Guard Tom Homan said that, you know, he was hoping that that pause was gonna make the agency review the protocols and policies when conducting traffic stops and also ensure that the federal agents had what they needed to feel safe. That was what Border Guard Homan said.
Now, after that policy was announced, the next day, so yesterday, President Trump on Truth Social said, no way. He said that he believed that traffic stops were an effective tool to get undocumented immigrants. And so pretty much the German administration decided to reverse this pause. And so it is likely that the traffic stops never stopped or were just briefly paused. So we are expecting to see more of these traffic stops happen. And something, a question that I receive often, and even immigrants have asked me is, can federal agents conduct traffic stops if they're not, right, the local police or the state troopers? And the answer is yes, but, right?