White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed July 16 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are still conducting vehicle stops, one day after a planned pause on the practice was reported and roughly a week after the agency was ordered to suspend 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 are aligned 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 uncertainty about the policy's status. 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 at the time they were killed.

One of the shootings occurred 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 confirmed the resumption, the policy had been in flux. 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 on the vehicle stop policy, 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 sequence of events — two fatal shootings, a suspension order, a reported planned pause confirmed by a Senate office, and then a White House reversal — unfolded over approximately two weeks. Leavitt's briefing remarks and Trump's Truth Social post on July 16 put the administration publicly on record supporting the continued use of vehicle stops as an enforcement tool, framing them as essential to the deportation operation's targeting of individuals the administration describes as serious criminal offenders.

The policy reversal means ICE field offices across the country are operating under verbal guidance to resume stops, though DHS has not issued a public written directive. The department's decision to refer policy questions to the White House rather than address them directly leaves DHS's internal communications on the pause and resumption undocumented in the public record.