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The Shooter in Maine Was a New ICE Recruit [View all]
The agency’s second killing in as many weeks prompted an abrupt policy change on vehicle stops
Link to tweet
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/07/ice-vehicle-shooting-maine-dhs/687912/?gift=SCYx-5scVta3-cr_IlgTye6i09qcVdKqgZBCLF9BjXQ
Late last night, at the end of a day that started with the killing of a 26-year-old Colombian man in Maine, the second fatal shooting involving a vehicle stop in a week, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Liana Castano sent out an email to top ICE supervisors around the country. “Effective immediately,” Castano wrote, “vehicle stops are suspended until further notice.”
It was an extraordinary directive to ICE officers on the street, essentially telling them to no longer attempt to pull over suspects in cars. ICE has been ramping up immigration arrests across the country in recent weeks to roughly 2,000 a day, nearly doubling the number of people it takes into custody compared with the spring. Many of those arrests have occurred during stops by ICE officers traveling in unmarked cars. Castano’s email said exceptions would be made in instances when ICE pursues criminal suspects in cooperation with other police agencies. But ICE officers, operating on their own, were told to stand down.
“All personnel are instructed to prioritize other existing operational methods, outside of vehicle stops, to conduct immigration enforcement activities,” Castano instructed, according to a copy of the email I obtained. The existence of the order was first reported by The Daily Wire.
The officer involved in the fatal shooting in Maine was hired by ICE this year from the Department of Veterans Affairs Police, according to the senior official. The officer has worked in federal law enforcement since 2017, the official said. Neither detail has been previously reported. The shooter in Maine has not been publicly identified; neither has the shooter in Houston, where the earlier fatal ICE shooting occurred.
It was an extraordinary directive to ICE officers on the street, essentially telling them to no longer attempt to pull over suspects in cars. ICE has been ramping up immigration arrests across the country in recent weeks to roughly 2,000 a day, nearly doubling the number of people it takes into custody compared with the spring. Many of those arrests have occurred during stops by ICE officers traveling in unmarked cars. Castano’s email said exceptions would be made in instances when ICE pursues criminal suspects in cooperation with other police agencies. But ICE officers, operating on their own, were told to stand down.
“All personnel are instructed to prioritize other existing operational methods, outside of vehicle stops, to conduct immigration enforcement activities,” Castano instructed, according to a copy of the email I obtained. The existence of the order was first reported by The Daily Wire.
The officer involved in the fatal shooting in Maine was hired by ICE this year from the Department of Veterans Affairs Police, according to the senior official. The officer has worked in federal law enforcement since 2017, the official said. Neither detail has been previously reported. The shooter in Maine has not been publicly identified; neither has the shooter in Houston, where the earlier fatal ICE shooting occurred.
There is clearly inadequate training of these "officers" and we need to prosecute and convict some of these officers'
5 replies
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