Trump Admin Says ICE Will Scale Back Traffic Stops After Recent Fatal Shootings, But Trump Seems To Disagree

This week, Trump administration officials reportedly directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to suspend most vehicle stops after two people were shot and killed by ICE agents within one week. In both cases, ICE agents were attempting to stop a fleeing vehicle using deadly force, then justifying it later by claiming the victims weaponized their vehicles. The administration’s decision to scale back these stops in response to the shootings would constitute a rare moment when officials were actually being sensible, practical, and at least somewhat moral. Unfortunately, that only means officials must have forgotten who they work for, and they should have known it was only a matter of time before President Donald Trump contradicted his own administration via social media.

And by “only a matter of time,” I mean the very next day. The news that the traffic stops were being suspended broke on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Trump posted this…

“The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” Trump wrote. “CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades.”

See, already Trump is lying. Crime has almost done nothing but drop in most states across the country over the past handful of decades, so the president is, once again, trying to take credit for something his administration isn’t responsible for, implying that undocumented immigrants had caused a significant spike in crime rates — which is also untrue — and using vague language like “in many cases,” because that language shields him from having to cite factual, verifiable information, which the president hasn’t done a single day that he has been in office. (Folks are going to say I’m exaggerating, but show me a single speech, interview, or social media post that would make it clean through literally any fact-checking mechanism. I’ll wait.)

Trump went on to say that to remove criminals he claims were let into the country under the previous administration, “we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

“Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands,” he concluded.

Who is running things, Trump or someone else?

So, is Trump not even talking to his people anymore? Have Trump officials finally just decided they will simply conduct White House business on their own while they sit the octogenarian toddler-in-chief in a room by himself with his Truth Social platform, a binky, and a set of toy keys to play with? Not that Trump has chosen the best, most qualified people to lead in his stead, but it might be comforting to know someone who isn’t possibly a dementia patient was making grown-up decisions for the nation.

What we do know is that if that adult decision-making person does exist, they aren’t ICE director Tom Homan, because he also seems to be advocating for traffic stops to continue, and he’s using irrelevant stats he probably pulled out of his backside to justify the position.

Here, Homan was asked by a reporter about the fatal shooting of a man in Maine by an ICE agent last week, which was the second fatal shooting by an ICE agent in less than one week, after the killing of Mexican immigrant  Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.

“Vehicle attacks are up 3,400%,” Homan declared, as if that’s a statistic that could definitively be attributed to undocumented migrants, even if the figure is accurate, which is doubtful coming from the same man who claimed 70% of migrant detainees had violent criminal records, when, actually, the government’s own data shows the opposite is true.

ICE shooting in Maine

When we first reported on the shooting in Maine, the victim hadn’t been publicly identified yet, but the government did make it a point to claim he “weaponized the vehicle” he was driving, just as it did in Salgado Arajo’s case and others, including cases where the narrative was proven false.

Well, according to the New York Times, the ICE shooting victim in Maine has been identified as 25-year-old Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastian Guerrero, and officials are no longer claiming he weaponized his vehicle against agents. Now, the official word is that “the vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”

Is ICE finally getting body cameras? Sorta…

In other related news, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that every ICE arrest team will have at least one agent equipped with a body-worn camera, according to CBS News. Now-former DHS leader Kristi Noem made a similar promise all the way back in February, but I guess the department is super serious about it this time.

“Ensuring all of our ICE law enforcement officers have body cameras nationwide is a top priority for DHS,” the department claimed. “This is especially needed because the media and sanctuary politicians consistently spread smears about our law enforcement.”

No, it’s especially needed because federal agents keep killing, brutalizing and racially profiling both citizens and non-citizens, and the federal government of proven liars — led by a pathological liar — keeps expecting us to take its account of events at face value, knowing there typically is no video evidence to show exactly what happened. And it’s rich that the DHS would accuse anyone of consistently smearing anyone, considering that’s what the department and the rest of the Trump administration did explicitly in the cases of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, which is what ultimately led to Noem and other Trump officials getting the boot following massive backlash against the government.

The whole administration seems to just be making it all up as they go along, and now officials aren’t even in lockstep with the president when it comes to its messaging anymore.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

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Polls Continue To Show Majority Of Americans Disapprove Of ICE