People gather near the scene at 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026, the third shooting in as many weeks. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian citizen with legal work authorization, in Maine on July 13. This makes him the 22nd person shot by federal immigration agents during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Almost 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 review of news reports and documents by the state’s newsroom. The encounters spanned the country, from Colorado to Texas to Oregon to New Jersey.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, where he promised an aggressive crackdown on immigration enforcement, federal immigration agents have killed six people, three of them U.S. citizens. Four deaths occurred during traffic stops.
Guerrero’s death marks the second immigrant killed by ICE officers during a traffic stop in a week, the DHS said Take a break from enforcing traffic stops. But Trump quickly ordered the department to do so Abandon these plans.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that officials will conduct vehicle-related enforcement stops “to continue their deportation campaign.”
The agency has sufficient financial resources. Last year, Republicans in Congress used a legislative maneuver to provide DHS with about $175 billion for immigration enforcement, detentions and deportations, without requiring Democratic support. Republican lawmakers took the same step this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol through September 2029.
After the ICE shooting in Biddeford, Maine’s entire congressional delegation called for an independent investigation, with Republican Senator Susan Collins calling for an end to vehicle inspections.
A report from Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union identified patterns of misconduct by immigration officers during Trump’s second term and identified 432 incidents in which officers used or threatened to apply force against immigrants and bystanders.
The report examined more than 1,200 incidents in eight states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New Mexico.
In traffic-related enforcement actions, the ACLU found that in 76 cases, people and passengers were pulled from their cars; Windows were broken 47 times; Officers rammed vehicles into people’s cars 14 times; and they hit people with cars six times.
What happened next
In the moments following those 22 shootings, DHS quickly accused those who were shot of using their vehicles as weapons against immigration agents.
But independent videos have often contradicted this narrative.
In at least five cases brought by DHS, charges were dismissed after the department blamed U.S. citizens and immigrants shot by federal agents as attackers.
In August 2025, Francisco Longoria, a Mexican citizen, was driving his vehicle in San Bernardino, California, when immigration agents in unmarked cars attempted to stop him. He fled and the agents shot him.
The Justice Department accused him of trying to harm agents, but prosecutors couldn’t defend DHS’s actions The charges were dismissed. Longoria was not injured.
Marimar Martinez was designated and charged as a domestic terrorist by DHS after she was shot five times in her car by Border Patrol agents in Chicago in October 2025 during the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign. The DOJ dropped its charges against Martinez, a US citizen, after the Trump administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.
As the president initially sent immigration agents to the nation’s capital, Phillip M. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was stopped by law enforcement, including an immigration officer who fired shots into his vehicle. Brown was not injured in the October 2025 shooting but was charged with fleeing law enforcement. The US Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case.
During the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation operation in Minneapolis in January that left two U.S. citizens dead, Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot and killed in his home by a federal agent. The DHS accused Cesar Sosa-Celis of hitting an immigration agent with a broomstick, but Cesar Sosa-Celis denied this and surveillance video supported the federal government’s claim.
The immigration officer who shot Cesar Sosa-Celis was was prosecuted by local officials in Minnesota and arrested in May for false report of a crime and assault.
In Houston, ICE officers killed a 52-year-old on July 7 Lorenzo Salgado AraujoHe said he tried to run over agents, as he had done in other incidents.
Salgado Araujo was driving several other people to work that morning when immigration officials approached his van. He was not considered a person of interest, DHS said.
The FBI has applied for a search warrant to seize plastic bags containing “crystal-like substances” and test for methamphetamine. according to the Texas Tribune. One of the lawyers representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the van during the shooting, said it was granulated salt.
A gloomy start to the year
Most of the people were shot by federal immigration agents in January. Three of the five people shot by ICE and Border Patrol agents were in Minnesota, two of whom died.
The two deaths occurred in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration has waged an aggressive deportation campaign against the city, which is home to many Somali refugees.
This month, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, and shot and wounded Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Good was killed in her vehicle, prompting then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to label her a domestic terrorist. DHS accused Good of using her SUV as a weapon, but independent video did not support this claim.
A week later, federal immigration agents shot and killed intensive care nurse Pretti, who was using his phone to record agents helping a woman being held down by them. Noem again called him a domestic terrorist and said he was attacking agents. But several videos taken from different angles don’t show that.
