By Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on July 13 killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national with legal work authorization, in Maine, making him the 22nd person shot at by federal immigration officers during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Nearly all of those 22 incidents — 19 — involved Department of Homeland Security officers shooting at people in their vehicles during traffic stops, a crucial connection, according to a States Newsroom review of news reports and documents. The encounters spanned the nation, from Colorado and Texas to Oregon and New Jersey.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, when he promised to carry out an aggressive immigration crackdown, federal immigration officers have killed six people, three of them U.S. citizens. Four of the deaths came during traffic stops.
Following Guerrero’s death, the second immigrant to be killed by ICE officers during a traffic stop in one week, DHS paused traffic stop enforcement. But Trump quickly ordered the department to abandon those plans.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that officers will conduct vehicle-related enforcement stops “in order to continue their deportation campaign.”
The agency has plenty of funding at hand. Congressional Republicans last year used a legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detention and deportations without needing Democratic support. GOP lawmakers used the same process this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol through September 2029.
After the ICE shooting in Biddeford, the entire Maine congressional delegation called for an independent investigation, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins urging an end to vehicle enforcement.
A Thursday report from the American Civil Liberties Union found patterns of misconduct by immigration agents during Trump’s second term, identifying 432 incidents in which agents used or threatened to use force against immigrants and bystanders.
The report reviewed more than 1,200 incidents across eight states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New Mexico.
In traffic-related enforcement, the ACLU found 76 instances in which drivers or passengers were pulled from their vehicles. Windows were smashed 47 times, officers rammed vehicles into people’s cars 14 times and agents struck people with vehicles six times.
Related: Midwest families left in limbo as ICE expands third-country deportations
What happened afterward
In the moments after those 22 shootings, DHS quickly accused those who were fired upon of using their vehicles as weapons against immigration officers.
But independent video has often contradicted that narrative.
In at least five cases, charges were dismissed after DHS accused U.S. citizens and immigrants shot by federal agents of being the aggressors.
In August 2025, Francisco Longoria, a Mexican national, was driving in San Bernardino, California, when federal immigration agents in unmarked vehicles tried to pull him over. He fled, and the agents fired at him.
The Department of Justice charged him with attempting to harm agents, but prosecutors could not defend DHS’s actions and the charges were dismissed. Longoria was not injured.
DHS labeled Marimar Martinez a domestic terrorist and she was indicted after Border Patrol agents shot her five times inside her car in October 2025 during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign in Chicago. The Justice Department dropped its charges against Martinez, a U.S. citizen, after the administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.
When the president initially directed immigration agents to the nation’s capital, Phillip M. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was pulled over by law enforcement officers, including an immigration officer who fired into his vehicle. Brown was not injured in the October 2025 shooting but was charged with fleeing law enforcement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case.
During the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign in Minneapolis in January, which left two U.S. citizens dead, a Venezuelan immigrant named Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot by a federal agent inside his home. DHS accused Sosa-Celis of striking an immigration officer with a broom handle, but he denied the allegation and surveillance video contradicted the federal government’s account.
The immigration agent who shot Sosa-Celis was prosecuted by Minnesota authorities and arrested in May on charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime.
In Houston, ICE officers killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on July 7, saying he tried to run over agents, as the agency has alleged in other incidents.
Salgado Araujo was driving several other people to work that morning when immigration officers approached his van. DHS has said he was not considered a person of interest.
The FBI sought a search warrant to seize plastic bags containing “crystal-like substances” and test them for methamphetamine, according to The Texas Tribune. An attorney representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was inside the van during the shooting, said the substance was granulated salt.
Related: ICE detained Iowa father in Clive and deported him to Mexico, group says
A grim beginning to the year
January had the highest number of people shot by federal immigration agents. Three of the five people shot by ICE and Border Patrol officers were in Minnesota, and two of those incidents were fatal.
The two deaths occurred in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration conducted an aggressive immigration enforcement campaign in a city with a large Somali refugee population.
That month, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, and shot and wounded Sosa-Celis.
Good was killed while inside her vehicle. Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled her a domestic terrorist and accused her of using her SUV as a weapon, but independent video did not support that allegation.
A week later, federal immigration officers shot and killed intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti as he recorded agents on his phone and helped a woman who had been pushed to the ground. Noem again labeled him a domestic terrorist and said he was attacking agents, but videos recorded from several angles did not show that.
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