White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on July 16 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are still pulling over vehicles. This came one day after reports said the agency planned to pause the practice and about a week after ICE was told to stop most traffic stops following two fatal shootings.

"Vehicle stops are continuing. Verbal guidance has been given to all field offices across the country by the Department of Homeland Security," Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room on July 16, 2026 (NPR).

Leavitt said the president and the Homeland Security secretary agree on the policy. "The president and the Secretary of Homeland Security are on the same page that vehicle stops are a necessary tool that ICE agents need in order to continue their deportation campaign of the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals from our country," she said (NPR).

President Trump reinforced the position in a Truth Social post, writing: "We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.'s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!" (NPR).

The confirmation that vehicle stops are ongoing follows a brief period of confusion about the policy. The New York Times reported on July 14 that ICE was ordered to stop most vehicle stops after two immigrants were fatally shot by agents in early July (New York Times). Both individuals were in their vehicles when they were killed.

One shooting happened in Houston, where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed during a traffic stop on a Tuesday in early July (The Hill). The second shooting took place on July 13 in Biddeford, Maine, where 26-year-old Colombian delivery driver Joan Durán Guerrero was fatally shot by ICE agents (AP News; France 24).

The order to suspend most vehicle stops came one day after the Maine shooting and about one week after the Houston shooting (NBC Bay Area.

Before the White House said stops would resume, the policy had been unclear. The office of Senator Angus King (I-Maine) confirmed to NPR on July 14 that the Department of Homeland Security had planned to pause ICE vehicle stops (NPR). When NPR asked DHS for clarity, the department referred questions to the White House (NPR).

The Hill reported on July 16 that Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Trump were "on the same page" about resuming ICE traffic stops, according to the White House (The Hill.

The full sequence — two fatal shootings, a suspension order, a reported planned pause, and then a White House reversal — played out over about two weeks. Leavitt's remarks and Trump's post on July 16 put the administration on record supporting vehicle stops as an enforcement tool, calling them essential to deporting people the administration describes as serious criminal offenders.

The reversal means ICE offices across the country are operating under verbal instructions to resume stops, though DHS has not issued a public written directive. DHS has also chosen to refer policy questions to the White House rather than answer them directly, which leaves the department's internal communications on the pause and resumption out of the public record.