Fresh internal directives have placed Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel under restrictions barring high-speed vehicle pursuits and requiring completion of designated training before any roadside stop can be conducted — a policy shift that followed a series of incidents in which drivers were shot during encounters with the agency.
An internal directive circulated within ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division — later obtained by a news outlet — stated that personnel have no authorisation to pursue vehicles whose drivers do not stop. A memo bearing the signature of ICE executive associate director Marcos D. Charles, dated Wednesday, directed officers to record vehicle details for follow-up review rather than act on the spot.
Updated guidance was issued following a pattern of ICE vehicle stop encounters that turned confrontational after motorists chose not to comply or attempted to leave the scene. Guns were discharged by officers in more than a dozen of those encounters from the previous year onward, with at least four people fatally struck and several others sustaining wounds.
Two separate incidents in which drivers were shot and killed — one in Maine, one in Texas, both in July — led ICE to place a temporary hold on most vehicle stops carried out by its officers. The following day, Trump posted on social media instructing the agency to continue conducting traffic stops, describing them as among ICE's most valuable and productive tools for addressing crime — a directive that came as the agency's arrest numbers climbed to record levels amid sustained White House pressure to increase deportations of people without legal status in the country.
Concurrent with that period, a wave of accelerated recruitment brought a number of officers onto patrol who had not completed adequate screening or preparation. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security had provided a response to questions about the policy guidance by the time of publication.
According to the document, procedures laid out within it are aimed at reducing risk during vehicle stops — covering enforcement personnel, the individuals being approached, anyone travelling with them, and bystanders nearby. Field office directors at ICE received written direction requiring that any vehicles deployed for traffic enforcement be fitted with operational lights and sirens capable of alerting the public to their law-enforcement status upon activation.
Under the policy, every officer present at a traffic stop is required to have a body camera running throughout the encounter. Vehicle stops are permitted only for officers who have cleared one of five designated training courses offered by the agency.
Any officer yet to complete the required training courses is restricted to riding along as a passenger during vehicle stops, with no authorisation to take the wheel of any vehicle involved in those operations. According to the document, agents are permitted to employ a tactic defined as using a vehicle or physical barrier to immobilise a moving car — provided they have completed the required specialised training beforehand. Spike strips — the devices deployed to deflate vehicle tires and halt fleeing drivers — are restricted to officers who have completed the required training.
The internal directive arrived on the same day that courtroom testimony laid out how the conduct of two ICE officers — who carried out a vehicle stop, a pursuit, and a shooting that left a delivery driver injured in Austin the previous month — would have fallen outside the parameters set by the updated policy.
At the bond hearing for Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, evidence presented indicated that the officer involved in the shooting had no body camera active at the time. No recording exists from that leg of the pursuit — the only officer carrying a body camera was travelling in a separate vehicle and had powered the device down before the chase got under way.
Surveillance footage entered into evidence by prosecutors captured a federal immigration officer in vehicle pursuit of Garces Perez through neighbourhood roads at elevated speed, following his departure from an earlier traffic stop. Federal assault charges have been filed against Garces Perez following an investigation in which authorities allege he made contact with an ICE officer using the driver's side mirror of his vehicle. Perez sustained a gunshot wound to the back when an officer fired into the vehicle he was in, officials stated.
Defence lawyers for Garces Perez have characterised the prosecution's case as retaliatory in nature, while also contending that the video evidence falls short of being definitive, given that the recording did not capture a complete view of the moment in question when he allegedly attempted to leave.
