President Donald Trump says Immigration and Customs Enforcementshould continue traffic stops after two deadly shootings within a week, seeming to contradict a new policy to halt them. To remove criminals from the country, “we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” the president wrote on social media.
In Florida on Tuesday, a third man in roughly a week died during an encounter with immigration officers. The 28-year-old was killed after he was hit by a tractor-trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.
Here’s the latest:
Durán Guerrero’s partner posts family photo: ‘Please watch over me’
Durán Guerrero’s partner, Karolina Rojas, the mother of their toddler daughter, shared a photo of the three of them hugging and smiling together on Instagram.
Advocacy groups helping the family have cited the Instagram account as belonging to Rojas and it appears consistent with other publicly available information about her.
Rojas captioned the photo with: “I love you, my darling, my life. I love you. I have no words for this pain. You were my everything. Please watch over me. Help me find the strength to carry on. Stay with me always. Don’t leave me alone. I’m begging you, my love.”
Prosecutors in Houston are trying to get special visas for eyewitnesses to ICE shooting
Three other men who were also in the van when Lorenzo Araujo Salgado was fatally shot last week are being held at an immigration detention center in Texas.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office told The Associated Press it has signed off on special visa certifications that describe the men as witnesses in local prosecutors’ ongoing investigation into the shooting. The visa applications would still need approval from federal immigration officials.
Attorneys for Daniel Tirado Pantoja, Jose Rojas and Victor Salgado, the victim’s brother, say their clients have disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the July 7 shooting. The temporary visas, known as U visas, are intended to protect from deportation witnesses who are assisting law enforcement.
In May, a federal court temporarily blocked ICE from detaining immigrants with pending U visas.
Maine governor says ICE must be reformed or abolished after shooting
Maine’s governor said Wednesday that ICE should be scrapped as a federal agency, if it can’t be fixed in the wake of a fatal shooting in her state.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said in a letter to the state’s congressional delegation that Congress must act to “require ICE to respect the rule of law and honor our collective security.”
Mills had criticized ICE before, including in January after a surge of enforcement activity in Maine that she said was marred by “lawless, dangerous conduct” by the agency. She said Wednesday the agency must be fixed “before more families are robbed of a loved one.”
She added: “ICE needs to be fundamentally reformed, and if not, then it is time to abolish it.”
Houston Mayor John Whitmire calls for Texas Rangers to investigate fatal shooting there
“We need DHS to allow independent authorities to investigate,” Whitmire told CNN on Wednesday. “The jurisdiction is federal. They control the evidence. We’re asking them to release that to the Texas Rangers.”
Lorenzo Araujo Salgado, who had no criminal record and had lived in the U.S. for 35 years, was shot last week while driving his construction crew to a job site in Houston. His death sparked protests in Houston and demands for an independent investigation from Democrats and Salgado Araujo’s family.
On Tuesday, Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz, Jr. formally requested that the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigative agency conduct an independent and transparent probe.
Mayor Whitmire also told CNN the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should pause ICE vehicle stops for 90 days to review its policies.
Biddeford Mayor Liam LaFountain calls for a permanent ban on ICE traffic stops
In a statement, he also questioned why the ICE officers involved in the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero weren’t wearing body cameras. LaFountain pointed out that his city’s police officers have been equipped with body cameras for nearly a decade.
“The fact that ICE is swimming in billions of taxpayer dollars and can’t perform a basic function like properly equipping their people is a severe indictment,” LaFountain said. “Corrective action is required immediately.”
