ICE traffic stops were just halted, then swiftly reinstated, as feds try to curb shootings – and the inevitable backlash | CNN

It was the problem that installing a new top official at the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to solve.

Support for the Trump administration’s intense focus on immigration enforcement was falling early this year after high-profile operations resulted in controversial deportations, violent confrontations with protesters and, ultimately, two US citizens shot to death in January on the streets of Minneapolis.

“My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” the incoming DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, told a congressional panel in mid-March.

Although there are two months left to go on that self-imposed deadline, Mullin’s hope for a quiet summer of inconspicuous immigration arrests has been foiled by another pair of fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents under his broad command.

The killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, both came at the end of traffic stops, which had become a critical tool for agents trying to meet the Trump administration’s goal of around 2,000 arrests a day.