WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to keep pulling over vehicles, signaling his opposition Wednesday to plans announced just a day earlier to suspend most traffic stops following another string of fatal shootings.
It’s not clear whether ICE will quickly reverse course and resume most stops, which have been a key tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Ending those stops, Trump wrote, would be “playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
“We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote Wednesday on his social media site.
Hours after Trump made his views known, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued his own statement saying people illegally in the country would be “arrested and deported wherever they are.” But Mullin didn’t directly say whether ICE officers will be allowed to carry out traffic stops.
