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After two fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in as many weeks, the agency will reportedly refrain, effective immediately, from conducting almost any traffic stops nationwide. Today I’ll explain how we got here—and whether this new policy will save lives.

Rewind. What happened in those two cases?Both involved people in cars. In Houston last week, ICE agents stopped Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican father of three who was driving a van to work. On Monday, agents in the small town of Biddeford, Maine, stopped a driver officials have identified as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian authorized to work in the U.S. Both men ended up dead from bullet wounds. Renee Good, a Minneapolis woman an ICE agent killed in January, was also shot while behind the wheel. Immigration agents have smashed car windows and injured drivers in other cases, too.

So halting traffic stops … sounds like a good thing?It certainly makes sense. It’s worth noting, though, that ICE has also defended the shootings. The agency claims that Araujo tried to run over an agent and that Durán Guerrero tried to flee. But ICE has provided no proof, and in Araujo’s case, eyewitnesses say the........

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