Since Donald Trump returned to office, federal agents have shot at more than 20 people as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown, killing six of them. Almost all those shootings have had one thing in common: They aimed at someone inside their vehicle. That includes Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the two men ICE agents killed in Texas last week and Maine on Monday.

Soon after Durán’s death on Monday, ICE directed its officers to temporarily pause most stop vehicle stops. On Wednesday, Trump reversed that decision, posting on Truth Social that “we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

Durán, who was 25, came to the United States in 2023 and received work authorization last year, the Washington Post reported. Friends and family members told the paper that he made the journey to provide a better life for his then-infant daughter. In Maine, he spent the morning cleaning a veterinary office and delivered food later in the day.

Mary Hayes, a retiree who lived near Durán, told the Post that she saw his partner sobbing on her knees after the shooting. “If anybody with a heartbeat stood there and heard it, and it didn’t bring tears to your eyes, then I don’t know what kind of person you are,” Hayes said. “I’ve never seen pain like that before.” She added that the couple’s daughter, who recently celebrated her third birthday, was standing near her mom with a pink backpack on the ground.

The number of people immigration agents are shooting inside their vehicles is shocking. Police officers have been taught for decades to avoid shooting at moving vehicles. The reason is simple. As Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, explained, “For the most part, you do not shoot at vehicles because if you hit the driver, now you have an unguided missile.” Instead, cops are told to simply step away. “It takes more time to pull your gun and do that than it does to take three steps back,” Alpert said.

In previous shootings, DHS alleged that the people it killed posed a specific threat.

Most police officers seem to have absorbed the........

© Mother Jones