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- [00:02]
A
A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto the David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch,
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B
These ICE officers are swooping in out of nowhere, in some cases trying to pin the vehicle of the person that they want to arrest. And if they do this hundreds of times a day across the country in multiple cities, it stands to reason that in some cases, the people thereafter are going to panic. And if they panic and try to drive away, does that justify killing them? And the answer is no, of course. But it points to the inherent risks of these kinds of tactics by ICE officers.
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C
The recent killings of two men, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Maine by immigration officers have put the Department of Homeland Security back in the place that Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen was trying to avoid.
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B
My goal in six months is that we're not in the lead story every single day.
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C
So the administration didn't want to be on the front page, but it didn't want to give up on its aggressive immigration agenda either. Recently, it's ramped up arrests to 2,000 a day. And on Friday, Mullen said they were going to stay the course.
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B
We're turning up the heat on the streets. We're out there working harder than we ever have because we've empowered our law enforcement to do their job.
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C
Many of the recent arrests were traffic stops. That's how the men in Texas and Maine were killed. And in Maine, the officer involved was a new recruit with reports say, a history of violent behavior and serious mental health issues. So they are definitely back in the headlines. I'm Hanna Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. Joining me today to talk about the two recent killings and about DHS Secretary Mullen is is Nick Miroff, who covers immigration for the Atlantic. Hey, Nick. Welcome to the show.
- [02:53]
B
Thanks. Good to be with you.
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C
So after Renee Goode and Alex Preddy were shot and killed in Minnesota, there was a lot of pushback against the way immigration enforcement was being done, including by Republicans, including by some MAGA people. So how did we get back here again with two killings by immigration officers in such a short period?
- [03:13]
B
Yeah, well, there was kind of a broader pullback, right? I mean, the administration sent Tom Homan into Minneapolis to clean things up. The President ousted Kristi Noem. Mark Wayne Mullen came in as the new DHS secretary signaling that he wanted things to be quieter, to keep DHS out of the headlines. And yet the calls on the right started, you know, throughout the spring, were growing for them to intensify their ICE operations. People were seeing the ICE arrest and deportation numbers lower than they had been prior to Minneapolis. And Mark Wayne Mullen, as well as border czar Tom Homan, were getting accused on the right of backing off of Trump's promises to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history. And so what we've seen in the last few weeks was a rapid intensification of ICE activity. They have been arresting about twice as many people as they were doing a few months ago, and they were trying to do it more quietly. It didn't look like Minneapolis because it wasn't all concentrated in one city. It wasn't border Patrol agents sweeping through neighborhoods. It was the kind of targeted enforcement that Tom Homan signaled that he wanted to double down on, the kind of tactics that ICE has always done. But this time, it's been more focused on vehicle stops, not on homes, it's on vehicle stops. And these vehicle stops are inherently dangerous for many of the reasons that we have just seen.
- [05:01]
C
What do we know about the details of these shootings so far? Because we haven't had the kind of videos emerge like we did in Minnesota, where we could see clearly what happened at the moment of shooting.
- [05:13]
B
You know, I'd say one thing else about that, which is, you know, if you think about Minneapolis, because everyone was so stirred up and the protesters were out in the streets, it was almost impossible for ICE to, you know, to carry out some kind of arrest like this without somebody filming it on a cell phone says a lot about how much more quietly they've been able to operate since Minneapolis. And the focus on the body cams is once again become a contentious matter. ICE got tens of billions of dollars, obviously, last year through the one big beautiful bill, and got another several tens of billions through the reconciliation bill that passed prior to the shutdown. So the White House is saying it's the Democrats faults that the body cameras haven't been distributed across the country, but Democrats are pointing out that they had tens of billions of dollars at their disposal last summer that they could have used on body cameras. And Kristi Noem, after Minneapolis, said that they were going to get body cameras out to ICE officers around the country. And here we are six months later with no body camera footage of either fatal shooting.
- [06:35]
C
What do we know about each of these incidents? Because it sounds like the traffic stop element is important. So what do we know?
- [06:42]
B
Well, I mean, what's. I think, you know, one of the first things that's significant about both incidents is that the officers killed someone who wasn't the target of their arrest operation that day. So in Houston, the team that went out and decided to pull over the work van driven by Lorenzo salgado Araujo, the 52 year old construction contractor and father of three US citizens. In that case, they were looking for somebody who they have not named and they were doing the kind of targeted enforcement that they'd be doing across the country. Typically, they go early in the morning to try to catch people as they're coming out of their homes and getting into their cars or heading off to work. The tactics that ICE has relied on historically to get people at their homes, that doesn't work anymore. People no longer open their doors for ice. They know that officers need a judicial warrant in order to force their way into a home. And so ICE has kind of given up on that tactic. And they're trying to catch people as they're leaving for work. And that's what they were doing with this work van, even though Mr. Salgado was not the target of their operation. And so what we know is that they tried to pull him over. There's surveillance camera footage showing that he didn't obey their commands, that he continued to drive. His sons have said that they thought he probably panicked. He was worried that he was getting robbed for his work tools that that were his livelihood. So he didn't stop and they tried to box him in. The Department of Homeland Security said that he tried to weaponize his vehicle and drive at them. Reporters who went to the scene did not see any major impacts on any of the vehicles, suggesting that there was a big crash. And there are eyewitness accounts claiming that the ICE officer who shot Salgado was reaching through the passenger open passenger window, shot him in the stomach and then the officers pulled him out of the vehicle and tried to handcuff him. There's a bystander video recorded that shows two officers over him and he's moaning in pain. We know he was taken to the hospital after that. Where he died.
- [09:10]
C
You mentioned that Salgado's son said he might have panicked when the police tried to stop him because he thought they were trying to rob him. That's not what a lot of people would picture as a traffic stop. Like, you would see the police lights flashing. You would know that it was a police car. So what is a traffic stop like by an immigration enforcement agency?
- [09:32]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. These ICE vehicle stops are not like traffic stops conducted by normal police officers with marked cars and flashing lights. These are ICE officers, typically in plain clothes, in driving, in unmarked cars. And they're really relying on the element of surprise. It isn't like driving past a police car on the highway and then it turns on its lights and you understand why you're being pulled over. These ICE officers are swooping in out of nowhere, in some cases, trying to pin the vehicle of the person that they want to arrest. And if they do this hundreds of times a day across the country in multiple cities, it stands to reason that in some cases, the people thereafter are going to panic. And if they panic and try to drive away, does that justify killing them? And the answer is no, of course. But it points to the inherent risks of these kinds of tactics by ICE officers.
- [10:37]
C
So that's Texas. What about the incident in Maine?
- [10:41]
B
We saw another targeted enforcement operation gone wrong in the town of Biddeford, Maine. And in that incident, what we know is that a team of officers went to a residence looking for someone who had what's called a final order of removal. An immigration judge had ordered them to leave the country, but it was not the person that I ended up shooting. And so a Colombian father named Joan Sebastian Guerrero was on his way to work, coming out of his home. Again, the officers claim that he used his vehicle in a way that they described as a threat to public safety. We've seen security footage showing the aftermath of the shooting in which the vehicle is kind of doing loops in an intersection after they have shot him. The officer involved fired through the. Through at least four shots through the windshield. He was struck in the head. There is also footage showing them taking him out of the vehicle and attempting to handcuff him as he's dying. And we know that the officer who fired was a new hire in this case, an officer who had federal law enforcement experience working for the Veterans Affairs Department police force, but had been hired by ICE just this year. And I think, you know, more details are coming out about this officer's training and his background.
- [12:22]
C
Yeah, and those details are pretty alarming members of his family told the media that he had a history of mental health issues dating back to when he was a preteen and also a history of violent behavior. So that's that one officer in Maine. Now, more broadly, another thing that's come up a lot is traffic stops. Both of these killings involved traffic stops. So what's the significance of that? Is that something that these immigration officers are not particularly trained to handle?
- [12:56]
B
Yeah. What I've been told is that ICE officers not only went through this kind of fast track training program last fall and into this winter because of the White House's urgency in getting thousands of more trainees out onto the streets, that generally, ICE officers don't get as much training in safe vehicle stops as, say, you know, large police departments. And that at the same time, they are increasingly relying on this tactic in order to make their arrest numbers and to, you know, meet the, you know, the pressure from the White House to have more and more arrests and deportations. And so they're relying on this tactic. They don't have what, you know, police departments call a vehicle pursuit policy that really establishes, like, clear guidelines as to when you can use force during a vehicle stop. Because what the Supreme Court has established is that you cannot shoot somebody just because they're disobeying your commands or they're fleeing police officers. The officer has to be able to articulate a reasonable fear of imminent harm to themselves, to the other officers, or to the public.
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C
When we come back, more about what we can learn about how DHS is operating and and the agency's new secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen.
- [14:28]
A
A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Wurzel onto the David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.
- [15:21]
C
Now, what happened after these killings is confusing, and I think clearing it up will help us understand where immigration policy is headed. The way it was first reported is that Mark Wayne Mullen talked to Susan Collins, the Senator of Maine issued a policy to at least temporarily halt these traffic stops that you're talking about. And then Trump comes out on Truth Social and seems sort of incensed by this. What did Trump write and how do you explain what happened?
- [15:54]
B
Yeah, well, the order of events is that Secretary Mullen talked to Susan Collins three times on Monday after the fatal shooting in Maine. And he also talked to Senator Angus King, the other senator from Maine. He had been hearing from senior ICE officials that the vehicle stops were becoming a problem and were exposing the insufficient training of these officers. So he was already hearing about these worries. And so late Monday night, an order went out from an ICE official to all the ICE supervisors around the country to halt the vehicle stops. And so the President, you know, people woke up to this Tuesday and by, you know, Wednesday morning, the President sent out his statement on Truth Social, effectively saying that they needed to continue with the traffic stops, that kind of countermanding the order from the ICE officials and saying that the traffic stops are a much needed tool and that they can't back down. And we know that he did that because throughout the day on Tuesday, as hardline immigration hardliners and members of the more extreme members of the MAGA coalition were telling him that it would make him look weak. And it's kind of saying similar to things to what they said after Minneapolis was that they're giving in to protesters, to the radical left, that they can't back down from the mass deportation campaign that Trump has promised. And clearly they broke through to him and he has reversed course. Now what we're still seeing is that some kind of new guidance is coming to ICE officers that is going to try to introduce some additional safeguards into these vehicle stops. But it also shows that the President is very sensitive to criticism from his base about any perceived backtracking on this deportation campaign.
- [18:07]
C
Yeah, because you said it calmly, but was a lot of capitals and exclamation points. I mean, it seemed like a very aggressive statement the President was making, which doesn't necessarily clarify the confusion. Cuz I'm assuming that Mullen wouldn't have issued that statement without checking with someone at the White House. So you think just afterwards there was a lot of MAGA pressure to reverse course. And it's as simple as that.
- [18:31]
B
I was telling that on Wednesday, you know, senior administration officials were really throwing Mullen under the bus on this one and saying that he hadn't cleared this vehicle stop order with the White House. But these are. I also spoke to people in the department who said that was impossible, that there's no way, this kind of order would have gone forward without people, including Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, from being aware that it was coming.
- [19:08]
C
Mullen is still in charge for the moment. Has he made any significant changes? How is he different than the previous leadership?
- [19:16]
B
Well, Mullen came in to replace Kristi Noem, who, along with her top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, ran the department in a very different way and made a lot of enemies there, generated a lot of controversy, and ultimately were removed because of the perception that she was trying to promote her own career, her own interests, and had just become too much of a liability for the White House in a way that was undermining the president's broader immigration enforcement goals. Mullen was brought in, I think, to stabilize the department, to bring a kind of a. A sunnier presence while still being somebody who was close to the president and intensely loyal to Trump and who would carry out the campaign with a better face, so to speak. But their goal has been to carry out the president's mass deportation campaign, but more quietly and with less controversy. And I think that they had been relatively effective in doing that up until these shootings. But it really shows the inherent tension in what they're trying to do. They're trying to carry out this incredibly disruptive, intrusive, controversial deportation campaign in American cities and communities, and there's just no way it's going to be quiet and that people aren't going to push back.
- [20:57]
C
So do you have a sense that the two latest shootings could change policy at all, could shift the course of how they're doing immigration enforcement?
- [21:08]
B
I think that after the president's response to that order and his fear of looking weak, I think, no, they're going to continue pressing forward. They have the money, they have the personnel. Trump has made this commitment. This is like the signature domestic policy initiative of his second term. So they're going to go forward and they're going to try to keep a lid on this stuff politically as best they can. And the question is going to be, can they pull it off? How many more of these shootings can Americans stomach?
- [21:45]
C
Well, Nick, thank you for joining us today.
- [21:47]
B
Thank you. Anytime.
- [21:48]
C
Honestly, that's all for today's show. This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Mike Pisoli. It was engineered and has original music by Rob Smirciak. Claudina Baid is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. If you like what you saw here, new episodes of Radio Atlantic drop every Monday and Thursday. You can subscribe on the Atlantic's YouTube page on Apple or Spotify or or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to support this work and the work of my colleagues, you can subscribe to this publication@theatlantic.com listener until next time, I'm Hanna Rosen.
- [22:41]
A
A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Wurzel onto the David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or.